

Real time lightsaber tracking and rendering on the Kinect - RK
http://kinecthacks.net/real-time-lightsaber-tracking-and-rendering-on-the-kinect/

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mrbad101
Wouldn't it be better if he was only holding a small 6" long stick, the kinect
tracks that, and digitally adds the extended lightsaber? Maybe this was just
his step 1.

It would minimize the destruction caused in your home from swinging around a
4' stick.

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collint
Maybe you could use the wiimote in combination with the physical tracking to
get more precise telemetry + precise physical location and AR.

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modeless
You just described Playstation Move.

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NickPollard
There have already been Playstation Move demos that do exactly this, with
superb accuracy and great response times.

(Disclaimer: I work for SCEE, but this is my own opinion)

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joblessjunkie
...if by "real time" you mean delayed by 200ms.

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kevingadd
In graphics terms when someone says 'realtime' they usually are referring to
the performance of the algorithm, not whether or not there's a delay. Lots of
video games have input delays of 100ms or more.

The framerate is pretty bad, though. I wonder why - I was under the impression
the Kinect captures at 30fps.

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farnsworth
Couldn't you do this with any webcam and CV? I don't see how the depth
component makes it any easier.

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sandaru1
As far as I understand, depth values make the blob detection easier. Normally
blob detection tries to use the brightness differences caused by 3D objects -
depth values make it much accurate.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blob_detection>

The youtube video channel of the author has his previous demos :
<http://www.youtube.com/user/yankeyan>

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ben0x539
> He says the next step would be to add a flying droid that shoots lasers, a
> blind fold, etc.

Great, once they have a blindfold the rendering delay will not even be
noticable anymore. Or the rest of the rendering, really.

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est
The main problem (with real time) here is that you can't move the stick too
fast or Kinect will lose the tracking.

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jhen095
disappointingly there is still a bit of lag in there. Though I'm sure that can
be improved in time. It would be interesting to see him swing the stick around
faster, see if the rendering can keep up an still track the stick when it is a
blur.

Looks like fun!

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est
I heard that Kinect only lags for a few frames. Perhaps the main lag is the
rendering lag?

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DanielRibeiro
On ubuntu. Great to see that hacking kinect is already enabling other hacks.

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nutjob123
Neat but not really exciting from a technological standpoint. Then again if I
was 12 this would be pretty sweet....

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jcfrei
this is a potential killer application. if they manage to make the tracking
fluent and accurate, everybody can finally duell other players in epic
lightsaber fights. anyone who liked star wars has probably been waiting for
this - let's see who gets it right first - PS3 Move, Kinect or even Wii?

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evo_9
I think I have a different definition for 'real-time'.

Pretty cool though for sure.

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tocomment
So how did he do that? (High level explanation is fine)

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sp332
He says he's using the OpenCV library. I assume it's got the tracking and
rendering functionality already in the library, and he just plugged the Kinect
video and IR depth data into it. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opencv>

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grantjgordon
Hah! I've gotta get me a kinect for tinkering purposes...

