5 Sci-Fi Technologies People Achieved By Hacking the Kinect
#2. Minority Report-Style OS
Minority Report was a movie about the slick future of computer graphical user interfaces. Menus weren't clicked on and scrolled through with a mouse; they were expanded, thrown about, manipulated with a flourish and a gesture. Oh, and we guess there was some stuff about predicting the future or something? We don't know; we were too busy ogling the shiny new OS.
And then figuring out a way to surf porn with it.
The Hack:
By default, the Kinect only tracks whole-hand movement, but it can be modified to track individual fingers as well. With even further hacking, which we're going to assume consists mostly of Rollerblading and CGI effects, it's even capable of some Minority Report-style interface control. There's the simple manipulation of images with your fingertips, like an iPhone in the air:
Or you could take it the extra mile, and enable manipulation of the actual workspace environment in response to your body position:
Notice how the menus in that video are activated not via meek finger movements, but by full body thrusts and dramatic uppercuts. Sure, it might not be as efficient as mouse clicks and keystrokes, but we'd certainly spend a lot more time in the office if every quarterly financial report was compiled via Bloodsport-style cage-fighting your computer into submission.
BAM! Dude just minimized the FUCK out of that bitch!
So What Does This Mean for Gaming?
Awesome. New. Menus.
Hell, 95 percent of any strategy, sim or role-playing game is spent in the menus anyway; might as well make that feel more like time spent hacking into Gibson's cyberspace and less like time spent micro-managing Excel forms. Or take a look at this video. "God" games like SimCity and From Dust take on a whole new appeal when you're conducting yourself through virtual cityscapes like a maestro of unholy destruction. Plus, that intense Koala vs. Mountainscape fighting game they start playing at about 39 seconds in looks like it just might be the next Mortal Kombat.
As long as it doesn't have that cheap ankle-kick shit.
#1. Lightsabers
Let's not kid ourselves: You're reading Cracked. Just playing the odds, you've seen Star Wars several hundred times, read countless essays about it and might have even written snotty comments about the extended universe addressed to ignorant Internet comedians. It is highly unlikely that there are attractive members of the opposite sex watching you read this right now; you don't have to pretend you don't know what a lightsaber is.
"GAH! What is this witchcraft?!"
The Hack:
Rule 34c: If it exists, nerds will somehow use it to re-enact Star Wars. This particular nerd hacked his Kinect camera to track a wooden stick and then overlaid a glow outline on the screen. As you can see from the not-at-all-embarrassing mirror in front of the monitor, the movement is tracked 1:1 in real time. The program even mimics the sweet whoosh sound whenever the broomstick -- er, sorry, saber -- changes directions.
So What Does This Mean for Gaming?
LucasArts has been trying, and dramatically failing, to get lightsabers right in video games for several decades now. Roughly half of all current video game players would never buy another game if you could give them a real-time lightsaber emulator. It's literally all some of us are waiting for. If a game studio could adopt this technology into a Bushido-blade-like fighting game, wherein the player bats away lasers, parries incoming enemy saber blows and callously lops off Sith hands with 1:1 accurate motion capture, the amount of money suddenly flowing into their pockets would offset the weight of the Earth and throw it out of its orbit, sending us all slowly drifting into the sun.
And we wouldn't even care, because fucking lightsabers.
For more on gaming, check out 9 Video Game Easter Eggs That Took Years to Find and The 7 Commandments All Video Games Should Obey.
And stop by LinkSTORM to see how you can hack your Xbox with a hammer.
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Star Wars Kinect sucked.
ReplyLight sabers are awesome
Reply#5 *cough*3DS*cough*
ReplyThe only problem with the lightsaber would be the countless broken TVs. Until the Holograms become actual Holograms. That day the world would end and we would all feel fine.
Replyf**k star wars and f**k light sabers :| both are so overrated.
Reply Hide All See All 9 Replies0_0 Get out. Now.
how dare you?!
Funnily enough, your comment is now UNDER-rated, if you get my drift
Frigging lightsabers, dude.
Cracked didn't even tell me I lost a downthumb when I hit it on that comment. Probably because they know it was for a just and true cause.
You're Mum's overrated!
FUK OFF, TheDogMolestor!!! Star Wars and lightsabers are above you and your pathetic life!! Now go get raped by your Daddy again, oh wait, it's not rape because you enjoy it!! LOL
Lazy troll is successful.
This is the most downvoted comment I've ever seen.
We can detect a planet 1000 light years away and calculate it's size, mass and atmospheric composition, slow down light to a few mph and recreate the big bang 100000 times a second but still no hoverboards, blaster rifles and working sexbots. What the fuck, science?? :(
Reply Hide All See All 6 RepliesActually, we have blaster rifles. In fact they only cost $2000 to build. Cracked already featured it in an article. But I'm still pissed about the sexbot thing.
Didn't any of you guys watch that Futurama episode with Lucy Lui. I'm pretty sure that if sexbots were a real thing the whole world would stop reproducing.
seen G4 sex convention thingy theyre working on sexbots and have some ...creepy cuz u can distribute *emotions* like randy sexbot and a erm a sexbot that *doesnt want sex* so rape situations yay?
and the ones they had were creepy has hell
great now i sound creepy :/
Of the list provided, we can do /one of the things you claimed we could do and two of the ones you claim we can't. You, sir, fail as much as it is possible to.
i'm afraid you have to hear it, most scientists hate fun.
Video game consoles have been self-aware for decades. They're just very good at hiding it. Haven't you ever wondered why just when you say you've finally got so&so mastered you find yourself in a clusterfuck? It's because you dissed the console man! NEVER let the console know your thoughts! They'll make you regret it.
ReplyI am reminded of the AI Director. lol
Ummmmm... yha, lightsabers exist within the Kinect game library. The new STAR WARS GAME (do your research!) is all about this, as well as various other force powers. It's not like they're hiding it. You could bother to use the Kinect or take a brief glance at IGN before you knock all of it's original programming.
ReplyWhat we wanted: f*****g lightsabers.
What we got: Moving your arms around and having the screen move a full second later, without any semblance of fun.
dont know watching a seven year old brother flapping his arms around and smacking into the wall and crying is hilariously fun to watch
I see a lot of accidentally smashed furniture in people's homes once the lightsabre games start coming out. The Wii-mote through the TV was bad enough.
ReplyHK's weren't depicted as tiny robots, they were the big, treaded, tank-like machines.
ReplyWhyyyyy is there such an obsesion with making computing more of a pain in my ass? What part of SMALLER MOTIONS NOT BIGGER MOTIONS is so f*****g confusing? Why would you ever want to make something MORE labor-intensive? In what world is that an improvement?
Reply Hide All See All 7 Repliesa thinner world
I know right? Why would you ever want to play sports when you could just sit on your ass eating nachos?
I imagined comic book guy from the simpsons screaming and spitting chunks of burrito while I read that.
If I want to play sports, I'll play damn sports. I want to sit on my ass playing games, then I want to be actually sitting on my ass while playing them.
For games, some aerobics are great. I love my Wii. But that Minority Report OS would suck.
Please tell me I'm not the only one who came up with a way to do wii bowling from my couch with just a wrist flick so I wouldn't have to stand up.
I'd probably play the sports on the wii so no one else can see me doing it. A bit clumsy, in high school while trying to throw a ball I ended up hitting the P.E. teacher with the ball, still passed though (failing was not participating).
I think that the Cracked writers like to insert porn references into all of their writing. Rule 34C has nothing to do with Star Wars.
Reply Hide All See All 6 RepliesThe Rule is as follows, and I quote:
"Rule 34C is an addition to Rule 34stating that if there is not porn of it, and porn of it is not currently in production, it is your job to create porn of it by any means possible."
___________________________________________________________________
OBLIGATORY EXAMPLE (Courtesy of Urban Dictionary)
Chris: Dude...look at how cute that panda is!
Ian: RULE 34!
Chris: Uhhh...I didn't find anything...not even previews...
Ian: RULE 34C!
Chris: FUCK!"
Congratulations. You just failed to grasp the concept of comedy.
I thought that was 34b...
Congratulations, you ruined the joke.
Not only was the joke dead already, but someone managed to drive a stake through its heart, dismember it into easily manipulated pieces, stuffed all of them in a compactor bag, then tossed them into a river that leads to death ground zero at the bottom of the Golden Gate Bridge, where people jump and kill themselves practically on a daily basis. Then the joke decomposed and chunks of it were eaten as time went by, leading it to its current resting place.
@solutions09 - I'm pretty sure there's porn of that.
That's Rule 35, dumbass.
Even a child of below-average intelligence could do any of this. Very impressive, surely.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesSo, I assume you'll be submitting your pics soon.
you. suck. ass.
Uh, if that is true wouldn't that be even more awesome? Every sub-average child can have a light saber! This world is wonderful!
Chess in Star Trek was called Tri-Dimensional Chess. It was made out of solid matter. I guess you could go to the Holodeck and play on a Holographic game board but that would just be a lame use of your Holodeck time. Now Star Wars had the Holographic Chess set on the Falcon.
ReplyI noticed that too.
f*****g lightsabers man!
ReplyMinority Report-style OS? I guess no one remembers Johnny Pnemonic...
Reply Hide All See All 7 RepliesNo, nobody does. Some may remember a film called 'Johny Mnemonic'.
Seriously, you are probably sitting in front of a computer that has spell checked (pnemonic = big red underline) and the whole Internet to fact check with. That, and mnemonic is not that uncommon of a word. Try to suck less.
I don't know that one either. Some may remember the film called "Johnny Mnemonic". Seriously, you are probably sitting in front of a computer that has spell checked (Johny= big red underline) and the whole Internet to fact check with. That, and Johnny is not that uncommon of a name. Try to be less anal about trivial details.
@ Folstar: I'm so sorry you ALMOST fell into that hole I made, but instead fell into yours. I was trying to spell it as "Pneumonic" as a JOKE (yes, that word ALSO has a big red underline after all, that no spell checker on Earth and beyond can catch). Yes, I do know how to spell Mnemonic, so you can suck less for having misspelled JOHNNY.
@ ZeroCtrl: I believe his seeing "Pnemonic" but misspelling "Johnny" 'spelt" his anal retentiveness.
Joannie Pnemonia was an excellent film! You all just shut your goddamn mouths.
Halt, sinners!
Ah, the old 'I spelt it wrong as a joke' excuse.
Next you'll be telling us you don't even remember typing that comment but you totally saw your younger brother hanging around your laptop earlier.
Johnny Mnemonic is a pretty good movie... now. It's one of those strange ones that are good after the fact. Reeves was new to "serious" movie plots when it came out.
I find it absolutely hysterical that Reeves later became absolutely f*****g famous for the exact same s**t in a little movie called The Matrix.
Love how most of these use Ubuntu as an operating system. :D Props to my main/preferred OS!
ReplyProbably because coding for Windows is a bitch.
#2's OS would also be a great solution to a lot of the usual office drone health problems - no more neck and back aches from sitting all day, no more carpal tunnel. On the other hand, it won't really be feasible until they also figure out an efficient alternative to the keyboard. Or those floating virtual keyboards from Vexille; the more feasible option though would be to have a wireless keyboard on a conductor's stand. Not as cool, but doable at the moment.
ReplyAlso, I'm not a big Star Wars fan, but I would still be all over #1, and if someone used #1 to make a Shinsengumi RPG my panties would be so wet I don't even... yeah I'm gonna go lie down now.
Imagine if someone used the basic concept in number five with a dome shaped screen like they use in Planetariums. I bet it would be possible to do something remarkably similar to the halo decks in star trek minus the solidness of course.
ReplyI think what you meant to say was Holodeck, and I doubt it would be anything like that. Even if it worked at all I'm not sure what the point would be.
In fact, you know what Sony, Nintendo and Microsoift? If you can't give us lightsabres, I'd settle for a good Highlander game. Highlander has swords, and lightning. I don't even care which version of Highlander it's based on. As long as the charater's movements are DIRECTLY connected to what I do (instead of making me do a pre-set move to make the character do a pre-set action like a poor imitation of Button Mashing) it can be set on Zaist for all I care.
Reply Hide All See All 4 RepliesSega activator, yo.
The Kinect Star Wars game. Look it up. It's coming out shortly.
@AshBradford
It's also going to control f*****g horribly and glitch out.
@ Ash The Kinect Star Wars Game sucked bro. Hate to break it to you.