A new hack for the Kinect allows players to become even closer to their avatar in World of Warcraft. With an open source framework tool called OpenUI and a Kinect, University of Southern California researcher Evan Suma and his team have hacked together a middleware program called Flexible Action and Articulated Skeleton, or FAAST. This program allows users to plug their Kinect directly into their computer and use it in the place of a keyboard and mouse for the game World of Warcraft.The software takes real-world gestures and translates them to commands for moving, casting spells, and other simple in-game commands. In a phone interview with Wired.com, Suma said “Our software communicates with the Kinect software and recognizes the user’s skeleton, It calculates each gesture you do and generates virtual keyboard commands, allowing you to communicate through them.”

During its launch in November, the Kinect sold very well and continues to do so despite the criticism of the library of games, which tend to focus on the casual side. But with programs like FAAST being used in conjunction with the Kinect, the possibility for deeper gaming using the Kinect is definitely an option for developers to take into consideration. In the demo video released by Suma and his team, they show off how they’re using FAAST instead of the standard keyboard and mouse setup for Warcraft. While his left hand controls the in-game camera, he uses his right hand to attack/cast spells and his body controls the avatar’s movements. As of right now the number gestures available is limited, but Suma expects more will be implemented in the upcoming weeks.

With FAAST software being an open source program, anyone is able to get their hands on it and play around with the functions. As we’ve seen in the past with other open source software, its fully expected that programmers will come up with all sorts of applications for the Kinect. “People will be able to modify it and do things we’ve never thought of, I’d love to see it used for completely different games.” says Suma. But some people don’t believe the Kinect hacks will have the success that other are hoping for. Jesse Divnich, vice president of analyst services for Electronic Entertainment Design and Research, is one of those people. In an e-mail to Wired.com, Divnich says “I don’t foresee these Kinect hacks ever making any entry into the mainstream market, nor do I see any of the big publishers/developers funding and commercially releasing any non-Xbox 360 Kinect games, The market is simply too small.” But Divnich also feels that it doesn’t make the hacks any less important. “While 99 percent of these hacks will never be commercially successful, it simply just takes one out-of-the-box idea that could possibly drive an entirely new form of gameplay on the Xbox 360,” Divnich said. “Microsoft is aware that experimentation can often lead to the next big commercial success.”.

Even though the hack is interesting and could lead to some phenomenal things, as it sits now it’s not the best option for higher level gameplay for World of Warcraft due to limited commands available the potentially laggy Kinect not giving the desired response time. “We’re [currently] limited to a few commands, so I don’t think it’d be very good for something like [raiding],” Suma said. “But if you’re in casual play, at a basic level you can go around and do enough spells for common tasks. You can grind for leveling, go on quests … but this isn’t going to be a substitute for your keyboard and mouse.”

Gaming aside, FAAST’s ability to take common movements and translate them into commands could help lead to advances in the medical and fitness world, said Skip Rizzo of USC’s Institute of Creative Technologies in the FAAST demo video. “This opens up the doorway for building rehabilitation exercises for people after a stroke or traumatic brain injury,” Rizzo said. It could also help in the battle against childhood obesity and diabetes by getting young gamers “up and moving around, so they’re not just sitting, planted, playing with a gamepad all the time,” he said.

Demo video of FAAST in action:

What other applications of the FAAST/Kinect combo would you like to see in development? What field of study do you think this application would provide the biggest benefit?

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[Source: USC- Institute of Creative Technologies (Evan Suma)]

Authors: V_Geek

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