When we last checked in with USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies, they had just opened up a holodeck training facility in Playa Vista. Not content with inventing things that are from the future, they’ve turned their attention to hacking everyone’s favorite piece of technology, the Microsoft Kinect motion sensor for the Xbox 360.
Normal people would have used the Kinect that Santa brought on Christmas for silly dance and sports games, but not the geniuses over at the ICT. Nay, they’ve spent their time working on a piece of middleware to allow people to play World of Warcraft using body gestures. When you think about it, it makes all sorts of sense. I mean why bother trying to get 5 stars on “Teach Me How To Jerk” in Dance Central when you can be using that time to level your Goblin Warrior?
The middleware is called FAAST (Flexible Action and Articulated Skeleton Toolkit) and it’s freely downloadable here if you are smart enough to have use for it. In very basic terms, it emulates keyboard strokes triggered by specific body positions and gestures. The technology isn’t just limited to World of Warcraft. Theoretically, you could extend the motion tracking functionality to any application or game with a little work.
Researchers at the ICT claim that this technology will open all sorts of possibilities with combating childhood obesity or serving as rehabilitation software for people recovering from traumatic injuries, but we know that’s all a bunch of baloney. The real reason they’ve worked so hard on this project is so they can play World of Warcraft at work while being paid for it. Duh.
Check out some demonstration footage of World of Warcraft with the Kinect and learn about how the technology works in this video:
