If you follow this blog and still haven’t experienced different gesture games modalities by yourself then -mister- something surely went wrong! Its all too easy to get everything up and running on your home desktop – there should not be any excuses J

Today’s post features some technical clarifications (Mainly for readers new to the Kinect hacking community)

Get the HW

PrimeSense powered devices: Xtion and Kinect

Get yourself an off-the shelf openNI compliant depth sensor: it can be either a Kinect or an ASUS Xtion.

Amazingly, until recently such equipment was considered an ultra-high-end piece of technology – now the Kinect is out, you buy it online for around 150$...

Purchase links:

Kinect:

Xtion:

Drivers

You will need openNI, Nite and, unless you are the proud owner of the Xtion, also SensorKinect

OpenNI

An open source framework and APIs for Natural Interaction (Backed mainly by PrimeSense)
For more info: http://openni.org/

Nite:

An openNI compliant computer vision middleware, free for users of PrimeSense based sensors (Like Kinect). Nite gives full body tracking, hand tracking, user segmentation and more.

SensorKinect:

An openNI compliant Kinect sensor – that will feed the depth stream to the Nite computer vision algorithms.

A package of openNI, Nite and Xtion sensor driver, can be downloaded at:

http://www.openni.org/Downloads/OpenNIModules.aspx
Choose:

OpenNI Compliant Middleware
Binaries
Stable
PrimeSense Unity Wrapper Stable Build v0.9.7.4

Sensor Kinect win32 download:

https://github.com/avin2/SensorKinect/blob/unstable/Bin/SensorKinect091-Bin-Win32-v5.1.0.25.msi?raw=true

Sensor Kinect for other platforms (If needed)

Unity

In general: I highly recommend getting to know Unity. This game engine has recently gained enormous momentum, due to many well-made aspects: from its amazing IDE and workflow to its equally impressive cross platform nature. Even the business model is impressive – you can start for free!

http://unity3d.com/unity/download/

OpenNI Arena

A part of the openNI website. Basically it’s all free downloads, many of which comes with full sources. You may register freely, enjoy the available content and upload your own demos!

http://arena.openni.org/

AngryBotsNI

Based on Unity3D’s AngryBots sample project, this is our concepts playground. Don’t be tricked to think this is just another example. Inside you can find many game modalities, and experiments. Current version demonstrates: On Body Items, Shooting, POV changes, cloning, etc..

AngryBotsNI sources and binaries are freely available in the openNI Arena

http://arena.openni.org/OpenNIArena/Applications/ViewApp.aspx?app_id=583

The guys keep evolving this – and coming versions will also include walking schemes, flying, gliding and more - so stay tuned!

(Credits for this work belong to Len Zhong, Geva Tal and Ran Shani - thanks guys!)

If you are serious in getting into gesture gaming – I suggest downloading it and going over the various demonstrated experiences. I can easily imagine how picking and polishing the right modalities, can combine with your original assets and game design, into a really excellent – non casual game.