onetimesilence

I found an article about Kinect and World of Warcraft tonight while looking up information on the Microsoft Kinect.

Apparently, work has been done on creating software, FAAST, using the OpenNI open source framework tool. This will allow the Microsoft Kinect system the ability to be used on a PC through the USB port and allow it to send commands to the PC based on skeleton movement.

Now the Kinect hardware and technology can be used on any number of PC games and it could possibly open the door for some innovative stuff. Although, there is still the demographic of people who prefer to sit and not move while playing games. Many stating that they play games to relax and NOT have to move around. But I would still love to see the option of using Kinect on my PC.

World of Warcraft Logo

This particular article focuses on how to use it to control your World of Warcraft character. And in this article, the movements are very simple. But it seems that the movements can be programmed in, or will be able to be programmed eventually. This would allow greater control and give more options.  I would prefer having more elaborate motions for a game with complicated controls like WoW.

Link to Kinect Hack article: http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2010/12/kinect-hack-world-of-warcraft/

I have a friend who is wanting to sell their Kinect to me. They bought the Xbox 360 bundle that comes with Kinect, but they don’t have the room in their “Xbox room” and their children don’t seem to have an interest in it. So…

Problem: the Xbox that comes in the bundle  have a USB port in the Xbox that is also “powered”. This allows the USB port to act as the connection AND the power supply.  This is great.  But it means that the Kinect doesn’t need a power supply. So they do not include a power supply in the bundle. So older Xbox’s that don’t have the powered USB port cannot use the Kinect.

Solution:  buy a power supply for the Kinect.  It costs $34.99 and is only available at the Microsoft Store (at this time).

So there are two options when buying a Kinect for your Xbox:

• If you buy an Xbox bundle with Kinect, you have what you need to use the Kinect with the new Xbox with powered USB (no power supply).  So if you get a Kinect from someone who has purchased the bundle, you will be missing the power supply.
• If you buy a stand-alone Kinect separately, you will find everything you need in the box to use the Kinect system with any Xbox360.