Mount Rushmore for Minecraft Made Easy!

January 9, 2011 9:11 PM

Ever since open source drivers were written for the Microsoft Kinect (previously), we've seen countless innovative uses of the hardware from puppet shows to air guitar to realtime 3d data capture. The most profound and far reaching hack so far, however, is no doubt the ability to import giant 3d statues into minecraft. More info on the project can be found here. (via reddit)
posted by inedible (34 comments total)

I suspect that last link might go down at any moment. Here is the coral cache version.
posted by inedible at 9:19 PM on January 9, 2011

Oh reddit, you never change. This is pretty awesome,Kinect, Minecraft and Nerf swords all in one post and half the comments are about this guy's girlfriend.

100 years from now nobody will remember Windows Vista, Kinect is what Microsoft will be remembered for.
posted by Ad hominem at 9:40 PM on January 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

Last step:

Don’t Profit!
        -easy enough

Haha.
posted by danb at 10:02 PM on January 9, 2011

100 years from now nobody will remember Windows Vista, Kinect is what Microsoft will be remembered for.

Heh. People are hacking the Kinect mostly because there is fuck-all else you can do with it. No one will remember it a decade from now, let alone a century.
posted by Sys Rq at 10:22 PM on January 9, 2011 [1 favorite]

SysRq: there is fuck-all else you can do with it.

Hey now, that's not fair. You can also play watch games with it.
posted by inedible at 10:27 PM on January 9, 2011 [9 favorites]

It's certainly true that the home brew stuff seems a hell of a lot more interesting than the giant kitty stuff, but the bugger is still selling like hot cakes.
posted by Artw at 11:04 PM on January 9, 2011

The Kinect is watching you, and you look very silly.
posted by Burhanistan at 11:04 PM on January 9, 2011 [2 favorites]

A shame Minecraft probably can't be altered such that a live feed from a Kinect would be updated in the game. So you could have a person controlling a monster and trying to like smash players.
posted by kafziel at 11:32 PM on January 9, 2011 [3 favorites]

Man, that would put a new spin on spleef. "HOLY SHIT RUN THE KAIJU DUDE WITH THE TWO NERF SWORDS AND THE ATTRACTIVE GIRLFRIEND IS COMING FFFFFUUUU"
posted by fairytale of los angeles at 11:35 PM on January 9, 2011 [2 favorites]

Everybody who believes that Kinect is the coolest thing ever detect it when you raise your hand.
posted by twoleftfeet at 2:39 AM on January 10, 2011

Just dropped in for the I Told You So.

Back here I was told that MS's closed-source stance was "objectively short-sighted". Not only did I get blowback, but my comment was actually deleted as "opinioneering".

Now here we are a mere 90 days later. I haven't heard a single person talking about the games but everyone is talking about the device. Incredible work is being done and even MS has semi-blessed these "hacking" efforts.

I will say it again: Microsoft is objectively short-sighted and their horizon has been measured at under 3 months.
posted by DU at 2:46 AM on January 10, 2011 [8 favorites]

It's nice that the depth camera finally found its way into the hands of hobbyists. The Israeli company that makes it has been shopping it around forever (I saw it around 2002-2003).

From what I understand about the tech, the 'active region' has a fixed depth, but it can be slid nearer or farther from the camera by adjusting the timing of the LED illuminators. In other words, you have a box that's X meters front-to-back, but you can move it anywhere you want along the Z-axis. The bounds were like near and far clipping planes. The version I saw looked like it used normal near-IR LEDs, i.e. no lasers or other fanciness. I bet you can graft a telephoto lens to the camera, along with a beefier illuminator (more LEDs and a fresnel, perhaps). Then lengthen the delay between firing the illuminator and triggering the camera cells. The illumination pulse is probably pretty finicky (very brief, sharp turn on/turn off). But it can be done (the one I saw could make the necessary exposure changes in software).

Then you can use this thing in telephoto for sports photography, nature, and other fun things that aren't video games. (Probably not macro, though. Sorry insect fans.).
posted by ryanrs at 3:22 AM on January 10, 2011 [3 favorites]

My favorite Kinect video so far is this transformation to Ulta Seven.

DU -- I bought one to hack on; the games are ok, but you're absolutely right that the real potential is in open source development with the device.
posted by autopilot at 3:46 AM on January 10, 2011 [5 favorites]

Now here we are a mere 90 days later. I haven't heard a single person talking about the games but everyone is talking about the device. Incredible work is being done and even MS has semi-blessed these "hacking" efforts.

Nobody on metafilter. I doubt the 8 million people who bought Kinects did it to hack it to work with Linux.
posted by delmoi at 4:44 AM on January 10, 2011 [3 favorites]

Cool site that is updated quite a bit with a lot of different kinect hacks.

http://kinecthacks.net/
posted by Allan Gordon at 6:59 AM on January 10, 2011

Heh. People are hacking the Kinect mostly because there is fuck-all else you can do with it. No one will remember it a decade from now, let alone a century

Well I don't think the games will be remembered. This is the first mass market version of a technology that will change the way people interact with computers. Maybe it will be like the Nomad or the other mp3 devices that came before the iPod though, perhaps the first tablet with this type of tech will be the big one.

I just keep thinking that in 5 years computers will be able to read your lips.
posted by Ad hominem at 7:04 AM on January 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

Have to hand it to Microsoft on this one: Kinect really seems like it potentially represents a significant tech breakthrough. Don't have it myself yet, and haven't really played with it, but from what I'm hearing about this, the potential applications of this kind of tech are mind-boggling...
posted by saulgoodman at 7:22 AM on January 10, 2011

Yeah, I think they've missed a trick not including XNA support out of the box. On the otherhand a lot of the cool stuff going on with Kinnect has probably got more coverage because people thunk they are sticking it to The Man in some obscure way.
posted by Artw at 7:42 AM on January 10, 2011

I'm not sure what you mean by short sighted. They absolutely could have included drivers and XNA support at launch as Artw says, but they never tried to obfuscate the data stream or introduce funky connectors, short of releaseing a spec I don't think they could have made it easier to get working on alternate OSs. The memo against hacking they released was pretty weak tea, I suspect it applied more to reverse engineering the device itself, not the data stream. They don't care what you do with the device any more than they care what you do with a MS mouse.

They have already announced they will support Kinect on the PC so we will see drivers then.
posted by Ad hominem at 8:15 AM on January 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

After going back and reading the other thread. Here is the MS "tantrum"

But Microsoft isn't taking kindly to the bounty offer. "Microsoft does not condone the modification of its products," a company spokesperson told CNET. "With Kinect, Microsoft built in numerous hardware and software safeguards designed to reduce the chances of product tampering. Microsoft will continue to make advances in these types of safeguards and work closely with law enforcement and product safety groups to keep Kinect tamper-resistant."

They are talking about reverse engineering the device, they don't give a crap if you want to use it on your MBP as long as you buy the device.
posted by Ad hominem at 8:22 AM on January 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

Back here I was told that MS's closed-source stance was "objectively short-sighted". Not only did I get blowback, but my comment was actually deleted as "opinioneering".

DU, it's hard to understand this. Do you mean, "I wrote that MS's closed-source stance was...'objectively short-sighted"? Because otherwise it's not clear what you're saying. Or I'm just not coffeed up enough.
posted by mediareport at 8:26 AM on January 10, 2011

Yes, that's what I meant. I wrote that right after waking up.
posted by DU at 8:52 AM on January 10, 2011

I just keep thinking that in 5 years computers will be able to read your lips.

They were already doing that in 2001.
posted by ekroh at 9:26 AM on January 10, 2011 [2 favorites]

It a shame that certain people will always be stuck in 1996. "MS IS TEH EVIL" is getting old guys. I find it hard to see how MS is any more evil than Apple, Google, Oracle, or any major tech company.

As far as Kinect being used in different contexts, well, thats been obvious from the get go. You don't need someone with a penguin favicon on his blog to tell you that. Lets lay off the politicized open source hacker vs The Man bullshit for a while. Its just a piece of technology. Some people are tinkering with it. Its fun to see the demos.
posted by damn dirty ape at 9:30 AM on January 10, 2011 [2 favorites]

Wheee! Derail!

So yeah, how about that minecraft huh? Pretty... blocky.. isn't it?
posted by inedible at 9:37 AM on January 10, 2011

I find it hard to see how MS is any more evil than Apple, Google, Oracle, or any major tech company.

Agreed.
posted by DU at 9:48 AM on January 10, 2011 [1 favorite]

Speaking of Minecraft I'm kind of psyched he is going to focus on mos support. Let the community come up with crap like battle towers and bettergrass, focus on stability and mod support Notch! CS and TF kept engines alive and interesting long after the life span of the original game.
posted by Ad hominem at 10:40 AM on January 10, 2011

Sorry, mod support.
posted by Ad hominem at 10:41 AM on January 10, 2011

Heh. People are hacking the Kinect mostly because there is fuck-all else you can do with it. No one will remember it a decade from now, let alone a century.

I distinctly remember people telling me this windows thing was just a gimmick, and that anyone who wanted multi-tasking had already switched to DesqView - which, to be fair, was actually better.
posted by anigbrowl at 11:38 AM on January 10, 2011

Not only did I get blowback, but my comment was actually deleted as "opinioneering".

No, your post was criticized for opinioneering but let to stand. Your comment was deleted because you were acting like a fighty asshole in the thread. This is not a good followup to that, please cut it out here and going forward. If anybody needs to discuss this further, you know where to go.
posted by cortex at 3:54 PM on January 10, 2011

the potential applications of this kind of tech are mind-boggling...

I'm sure there are plenty of minds boggling it over down at the DHS and TSA.

Telescreen. Just sayin'.
posted by Sys Rq at 5:15 PM on January 10, 2011

Someone ripped off the controllers from the office X-Box, so now we would really like is a kinect mod that tracks potential controller thieves and, when it detects them, uses a high powered laser to digitise them into the X-Box so you can run them over with a lightcycle.
posted by Artw at 5:26 PM on January 10, 2011

CrunchGear: Why Minecraft Matters
posted by XMLicious at 1:47 AM on January 16, 2011

UW students adapt gaming hardware for robotic surgery
posted by auto-correct at 2:15 PM on January 18, 2011