BLITZ, the interactive agency behind campaigns for HALO, Nike, Starbucks, DIRECTV, FX and so on, has today released the source code and scripts for hacking Microsoft’s Kinect hands-free motion controller to allow it to output data to platforms such as Flash, Silverlight, Unity or HTML.
A limitation of Kinect is that everything that has to be done with C++, a language that doesn’t lend itself well to creating rich user interfaces. A solution that Noah Gedrich and Yosef Flomin of BLITZ have come up with is to set up a socket server that C++ can connect to and send the output from the Kinect to a listener, such as a Flash application, Silverlight application, Unity, HTML or whatever.
When Kinect was first announced, we immediately began dreaming of the different ways we could use it to create engaging experiences that leveraged physical interaction for our clients. Unfortunately, in the earliest days, we would have been tied to Xbox’s proprietary XDK and only able to publish to the Xbox itself. With this breakthrough, we’re arming any Flash, Silverlight or Unity developer around the world with an intuitive way to implement physical interaction models into their work. Be it a large-scale installation or a desktop application, marketers, agencies and developers can save a great deal of time, energy and money — opening up the potential of Kinect beyond Xbox to any platform supporting socket connections increases the creative possibilities exponentially.
The agency also created a video to give a step-by-step tutorial for how developers can use Kinect to drive impressive new interactive experiences or even Flash-based games.
Flash Kinect Demo from BLITZ Agency on Vimeo.
Source code available for download from the BLITZ Lab Blog.
