Watch World of Warcraft With a Kinect

Now World of Warcraft is truly magical! Engineers at the Institute for Creative Technologies have been working on an open-source toolkit that allows users to play off-the-shelf PC games using a Kinect device.

The FAAST project has been headed up by post-doc Evan Suma, and says that the toolkit could be used for rehabilitation and exercise purposes to overcome obesity and traumatic brain injury.

Suma demonstrated the effectiveness of the work by using World of Warcraft as an example, although initially programming began on simpler games such as Tux Racer and Space Invaders. "The control mechanism for these games was fairly simple – leaning side-to-side – which would be appropriate for rehabilitation of balance problems such as those encountered after a stroke," Suma said.

"I wanted to see if we could push the envelope by controlling a complex game that would require much more complicated interactions. WoW seemed like a natural choice because it is a really deep, engaging, and popular game that would showcase the possibilities for integrating full-body interaction in new and innovative ways."

Suma added that the FAAST project is but an experimental proof-of-concept at the moment, but has opened the doors for the community to work with it and help evolve it. "In the future, I want to provide the capability for users to train their own custom gestures in addition to using our predetermined ones."

Sounds like a goer for the PrimeSense WAVI Xtion device then. Watch the video below and think of the possibilities.



Source: ICT