Kinect hack makes the user invisible

[Emil]

When you were a kid, did you ever wish you could turn invisible, if only for a day? Scientists are already working on making an invisible cloak, according to the BBC News, but maybe you won't have to wait for them to finish the technology and bring it to the market. All you really need is $150, the willingness to spend it on Microsoft's Kinect motion controller, and a little bit of coding.

Takayuki Fukatsu has developed a hack using OpenFrameworks, an open source C++ toolkit, that makes the user look as if they are invisible on Kinect's cameras. Since the Kinect can distinguish between a human and the background environment behind it, Fukatsu has managed to overlay said background on top of the image of the user. Thanks to Kinect's hardware, the superimposition can occur in real time. This seven minute video shows what he's managed to achieve (it gets good at minute 1:30):

The video reminds us of how a chameleon would use its camouflage abilities to hide from predators, or to be a predator itself. To see other examples of camouflage in nature, check out this article: Masters of Nature Camouflage: Unbelievable Animal Photography.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/41413-kinect-hack-makes-the-user-invisible.html

 

[Zilpha]

Reminds me of the chameleon spell\effects or steath boy effects in Oblivion and Fallout.

Nifty.

 

[Cota]

Nice to c how Kinect is going up on PC's, hopefully this helps to make people understand how consoles are holding back the PC gamers.
Now how do i replace bank cameras whit this?

 

[Zilpha]

Consoles are holding back PC gamers? Wow - you sound a little bitter there. Consoles don't hold anything back. If a developer wants to develop for a PC, they will.

 

[Emil]

Zilpha said:
Consoles are holding back PC gamers? Wow - you sound a little bitter there. Consoles don't hold anything back. If a developer wants to develop for a PC, they will.

https://www.techspot.com/news/41323...on-ahead-but-ps3-and-360-holding-it-back.html

 

[Zilpha]

It's a vicious cycle: the PC market doesn't give the same revenue as the console market, so companies don't spend much on the PC version of a game.

The PC market being smaller than the console market is what's holding it back - not the fact that there is a console market. We're starting to see a shift towards PCs as they become more "living room friendly" - so I guess that would be the real thing holding PCs back: the fact that it's still a piece of equipment that you sit at a desk with as opposed to a lounge chair.

PC gaming is superior - but I find that quite often I would rather sit in front of the TV and play Fallout than sit at the desk and play it.

 

[lawfer]

Is it it wrong if I say I can still actually see him....

 

[mattfrompa]

Emil said:

Zilpha said:
Consoles are holding back PC gamers? Wow - you sound a little bitter there. Consoles don't hold anything back. If a developer wants to develop for a PC, they will.

https://www.techspot.com/news/41323...on-ahead-but-ps3-and-360-holding-it-back.html

I don't agree with Crytek, and as I have said before, PC vs Console is not an apple to apple debate, and there are often several aspects which are ignored or become an issue of preference.
With that said, MS has to love all of this exposure (and sales) with Kinect. It may not be "the future of gaming" but profits are profits.

 

[LNCPapa]

Being able to set myself to 30% opacity would be pretty fun - and maybe even useful especially if I were overlaying myself on a presentation via webex or the like. It might even be useful for doing things like weather reports or overlaying yourself on a youtube video feed where you can actually point at things (since you can see where you are in realtime.)

 

[Guest]

The nightmare of my childhood, a Predator!!!

 

[Kibaruk]

PREDATORS FINALLY GOT FILLED WITH CRAPPY MOVIES INVOLVING PUNNY HUMANS KILLING THEM!! RUN FOR YOUR LIIIIIFE!

PS: I actually liked predator movies... oh no they know now D:!

 

[DSparil]

Ok...

If you're going to become invisible based on that Kinect idea, then you have to hack people's eyes to become invisible.

 

[Guest]

why would you even bother doing something like that -- background subtraction is a the most primitive video segmentation technique and well known in CV. You don't need Kinect to do this - simple webcam will be enough... Those "kinect hackers" should really move on to something interesting... Coding "hello world" over and over again and posting it on YouTube is getting old...