So What Does This Mean for Gaming?

It's still technically a 2-D display, so it might not mean holographic games quite yet (at least not beyond the puzzle variety, though it would make a sweet-ass Jenga simulator). But it could mean the end of all camera issues. No more bullshit auto-centering right as you're about to make a key jump, no more getting stuck in corners, no more awkward, clumsy controls. It looks where you look and shows you what you would see from that angle. Do you know what that means, console gamers? We get an entire analog stick back! We could use it for anything: Aiming independent of the camera, movement control of AI partners or just swinging a virtual arm around like a total spaz!

Or just spending the whole day flipping out your cats.

And yeah, we know, the hack isn't exactly beaming images out into the center of your living room or anything, so maybe it's cheating to call it a hologram. But think about it: You know you're going to use this shit to upskirt that busty video game heroine at some point, and a 2-D image is a hell of a lot easier to hide than a translucent ghost ass hovering in the middle of your living room.

The Hack:

In this clip, some UC Berkeley professors basically glued a Kinect to a quadrotor, then programmed the Kinect to fly the copter while avoiding obstacles. What's the difference between this and those army UAVs? There's no human control here. The whole thing is self-contained. There's an onboard computer that does the software heavy lifting and even backup sensors in case the Kinect malfunctions. Although the video doesn't specifically mention it, the next step is obviously duct-taping a Glock to the thing and seeing how well it pops off headshots.

Dear God, don't taunt it!

So What Does This Mean for Gaming?

If the future is Augmented Reality Gaming -- the practice of overlaying video games on the real world -- then cheap, autonomous gaming drones are going to be invaluable. They could keep score for you, track your progress through the game/world or even stand in for virtual enemies. And when they inevitably become self-aware and the game becomes horribly real, hey, at least you'll die doing what you loved: being shot by robots.

Photos.com
Honestly, we all have it coming.

HAL 9000 was the intelligent piloting system that went haywire and took over Dave's ship in 2001: A Space Odyssey. HAL's primary abilities were tracking humans with its cameras, learning and speaking in an unsettling hushed monotone like a registered sex offender.

"Dave, I'm required by law to inform you when I enter the neighborhood."

The Hack:

We haven't compiled all of HAL's killer aspects into one single Kinect hack yet. You'd probably know if we had, as you'd be reading this from inside the blast furnace you'd been tricked into. But we sure are working on each individual trait separately: Here's a Kinect hack that doesn't just track movement, but also recognizes human forms and where they are in real space. Free bonus! It comes in creepy eyeball form.

Here's one that's learning object-recognition and speech:

Via yankeyan

And here's another whose only purpose is to ask where you are, and what exactly you think you're doing:

Via KinectHacks
"Your penis appears to be .0428 standard deviations below the mean human length."

And if your name happens to be Dave, this is all sounding terribly familiar to you right now ...

So What Does This Mean for Gaming?

Just in general, a learning machine will mean an end to clumsy, unrealistic AI. Enemies could learn which weapon you favor, which eye is dominant and even your preferred play style -- whether to be on guard for stealth attacks or a rocket-slinging death charge, for instance. But that's probably giving "camera software that recognizes stuffed giraffes" a little too much credit. The most this particular program could aspire to is a kind of futuristic R.O.B. the Nintendo robot -- a novelty peripheral that knows your name, interacts with you and plays games based on scanning real-life objects. But honestly, that's all we ever wanted out of the future: A wacky robot sidekick. If that's somehow not good enough for you, well, then you've either suffered serious trauma to the imagination lobe or you yourself are already a cold, heartless robot and see no need for the redundancy.

In which case, hey -- wanna be our sidekick?

Getty
Wait, you don't have skull-crushing strength, do you?

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.