Microsoft Kinect Hacked to Play World of Warcraft

When Microsoft released its Kinect a couple of months ago, it rounded out the available selection of “motion” peripherals from all three of the major players. I admit, I wasn’t too impressed with Kinect, and I wrote an article to explain why. One thing about Kinect does impress me however… all of the hacking done to it since its launch.

I posted a bit about this late last month, as Microsoft seemed to be a little more welcoming of the idea of hacking Kinect than it had been at the product’s launch, and since then, more and more developers have jumped on the bandwagon to see what could be created.

Researchers at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies, who are likely to be World of Warcraft addicts, have created what they call the “Flexible Action and Articulated Skeleton Toolkit” (no such thing as simple titles there, apparently), or “FAAST”. In short, the tech allows the Kinect to work with a PC, and it can override certain functions of a keyboard. It’s simple in theory, and has been done before, but to see it work rather well in the early stages is impressive.

To move in WoW with this, you need to lean a bit forward or backward to walk in a certain direction, while the left hand is used to move left or right, and the right hand to fire or attack. It seems a tad clunky, but I can see how it’d work fine after a while. Plus, it does have the potential to increase the fun-factor, but for me, the verdict is still out on that.

Researchers at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies have developed software that enables control of PC video games using the Microsoft Kinect sensor. Their toolkit, known as the Flexible Action and Articulated Skeleton Toolkit (FAAST), emulates custom-configured keyboard controls triggered by body posture and specific gestures.