Motion Controller
The Kinect-controlled, Windows 8 tablet-powered “Board of Awesomeness”
When Microsoft asked gamers to get off the couch and get moving with the release of the Kinect motion controller in 2010, it’s doubtful that zooming around the streets at speeds of up to 32 mph (51 km/h) was the kind of movement they had in mind. But as we’ve seen ever since unofficial open source drivers hit the Internet in 2010 and Microsoft came to the party with its official Kinect for Windows SDK last year, the Kinect has proven to be a remarkably flexible device. That flexibility now extends to a motion control interface for a motorized electric skateboard modestly dubbed by its creators, the “Board of Awesomeness.” Read More
Microsoft’s about-face in relation to the “modification of its products” – specifically its Kinect sensor – is complete with the company releasing the official Kinect for Windows SDK beta. When the motion controller was initially released and hackers set about creating open source drivers for the device, Microsoft responded saying it didn’t condone such actions. But it has since changed its tune, even going so far as to invite a group of developers to its Redmond campus for a live 24-hour coding marathon to build concept applications using the SDK. Read More
Nintendo took the wraps off its new Wii U console at E3 today, sporting a controller as unique as we've come to expect from the company that brought us the Wii and the DS. With a 6.2" touchscreen, dual-analog sticks, D-pad, four face buttons, four triggers, front-facing camera, microphone, and motion controls (gyroscope and accelerometer), it's safe to say we'll see some innovative game mechanics invented to make full use of this thing. Read More
While motion controllers are becoming a staple for console gamers with the release of the Wii, PlayStation Move and Microsoft Kinect, PC gamers have been left wanting. Razer is looking to change that with its Hydra motion controller which has been developed specifically for PC gamers. Unlike other console-based motion control systems, the Hydra uses magnetic tracking technology by way of a base station that emits a magnetic field that Razer says allows the exact location and orientation of the handheld controllers to be detected with millimeter and degree accuracy. Read More
Motion controlled videogaming, ushered in by Nintendo’s Wii and joined by the PlayStation Move and Kinect, has opened up a whole new market of casual gamers – not least of all because of the ease with which previous non-gamers can get into the action without the need to learn complicated button layouts on a traditional controller. Educational toy company Comfy figured that such ease of use is ideal for its target audience of kids aged four to eight and has released a motion controlled education game console called iCam that has been dubbed “the baby Wii.” Read More
Sony unveiled the successor to the PSP at its PlayStation Meeting in Tokyo today. While Sony spokespeople continually referred to the device by its codename of Next Generation Portable (NGP), it's not yet clear whether this will be the name of the device when it is brought to market. Read More
US$3,000 bounty claimed for open source Kinect drivers
The race to claim the bounty offered by Adafruit for open source drivers for Microsoft’s Kinect has been run and won. The winner is hacker Hector Martin whose achievement of producing drivers to pull depth and RGB camera data from a Kinect is made even more impressive by the fact that it came just three hours after the European launch of the device. Read More
In the creation of the film Avatar, director James Cameron invented a system called Simul-cam. It allowed him to see the video output of the cameras, in real time, but with the human actors digitally altered to look like the alien creatures whom they were playing. The system also negated the need for a huge amount of animation – every performance was captured in all its blue-skinned, pointy-eared majesty as it happened, so it didn’t need to be created from scratch on a computer. Now, researchers from the University of Abertay Dundee have built on the techniques pioneered by Simul-cam to create a new system, that lets users act as their own cameraperson within a 3D environment. Read More
US$2,000 bounty put on open source drivers for Microsoft's Kinect
It’s only just been released in North America and already there is a move to hack Microsoft’s Kinect motion controller to allow it to be used on systems other than the Xbox 360. As part of its Open Kinect (OK) project, New York-based open-source hardware developer, Adafruit, is offering a US$2,000 bounty to anyone who can produce some open source drivers capable of getting the RGB out and distance values captured by the USB device. Read More
Sony's motion controlled gaming setup, PlayStation Move, has arrived in stores, and if you believe the hype, it's everything we wanted the Wii to be...and more. Is this the future of gaming or just another expensive set of peripherals that will be buried in the back of a cupboard by the end of the year? Read on for our review. Read More
