More Kinectyhacks: World Of Wavecraft
Updated: MS deny plans to release Kinect beyond the 360 - see below.
Yesterday we told you news of Kinect being used to play RUSE. Today: World Of Warcraft. With the 360 peripheral being realised far more excitingly as a piece of PC equipment, can it be long before Microsoft decides to change their uncharacteristic toleration of all this hackery into something legitimate? This latest hack is by the University of Southern California, as Wired tells us, building the Flexible Action and Articulated Skeleton Toolkit piece of middleware to allow them to play the one MMO to rule them all by waving their arms around. There's an actual real-life video of it below.
If Magic: The Gathering players wrote Minority Report:
It's well worth reading the Wired article, which interviews the researchers about quite how impressive the FAAST tech is, and how much more potential it adds to the Kinect's outwardly clumsy appearance. It's probably never going to be a sensible way to play WoW, but it does seem that its applications could be extremely far-reaching. And since FAAST is Free Software, anyone with the inclination can have a go.
How long before MS releases a PC Kinect? I'm guessing seven months.
EDITIFIED!
Promptly, it seems that Microsoft have suggested they've no plans to release Kinect outside of the 360. This is in response to the news that ASUS plan to release a Kinect clone this year, made by the same people who put Kinect together for MS. NOW Gamer spoke to Microsoft who told them they've no intention to embrace the PC at all.
ASUS's WAVI Xtion will be revealed at CES2011.