microsoft kinect: fun labs

‘googly eyes’, one of the first four releases of kinect’s ‘fun labs’

‘fun labs‘ is a free permanent addition to the kinect hub, planned to showcase innovative programs by not only game companies but also users utilizing kinect development tools. the first five games and utilities released in the program have interfaces geared more towards children, but feature advanced processes that expand the realm of interaction for kinect users, hackers, and artists.

video preview of the newly released ‘fun labs’ games

view of the navigation screen within ‘fun labs’

perhaps the most interesting of the new releases is ‘kinect sparkler’, which showcases the developments in finger tracking and background removal that are expected to become even more prominent in the late summer releases for kinect. the program first takes two images, one of the foreground and one of the background, and then permits the user to ‘draw’ in the air with his finger, rendered in realtime as a fiery path of light. the light trail is composited in 3D space of the image, and can be viewed from multiple angles after the recording has finished.

‘build a buddy’ lets any real-life object (here a stuffed animal) be scanned, given particular properties, and then moved and interacted with in virtual worlds

‘build a buddy’ lets any real-life object be scanned, front and back, by the device, and interacted with in the virtual environment after selecting certain behaviours for it. ‘googly eyes’ takes another approach to the process by scanning any object and letting the user ‘be’ that object in the virtual world, permitting the recording of voice and movement to create digital animations.

custom avatars feature a cartoon rendition of a photograph of the user, so that features and clothing match very closely

the ‘kinect me’ utility for avatar creation replaces the traditional method of assembling predrawn features to generate an avatar, instead taking a photo of a user’s face and body and cartoonifying it. users can also create bobble heads of their avatars with the new ‘bobble head’ program.

photos and video records from the ‘fun lab’ modules can be shared via the ‘friend feed’, a network of user’s friends that lets each person view one another’s information and saved media (complete with a kinect ‘like’ button) or on kinectshare.com.

the download screen for ‘bobble head’ also depicts the ‘like’ and friend feed functionality built into ‘fun labs’

screenshot from ‘kinect sparkler’, which traces a user’s finger movements in light

additions in july to kinect ‘fun labs’ will include enhanced tracking precision and background removal functionalities; facial recognition advances; and the ‘avatar kinect’ module, that offers themed environments in which a user and up to seven friends can ‘hang out’ in virtual space. six user-proposed gadgets are also subject through july 6th to popular vote to determine which will be produced into a real program.

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