Friday, April 11, 2008

Free your hands

Mitch Kapor and Philippe Bossut from Kapor Enterprises designed a interface prototype that makes it possible to operate Second Life with out a mouse or keyboard, and called it Hands Free 3D.
3 months ago they started to work on this idea, they modified the open source client to support a 3D camera as a input device. This following YouTube movie demonstrates the possibilities:



It is pretty good what they already got done, but one does wonder how comfortable it is to navigate this way, it might be fun for a presentation, but I'm skeptical if this really is a superior control system. Besides they don't show a example of building, which I'm more interested in. I can envision something where you pick up prims and mod them with your hands.

They mention that 3D cameras aren't available for the mainstream yet, but I would think a larger screen or a beamer would be needed to, to better see where you are.

It is a cool development, and it is only the first phase. Now we have to figure out how this could be best used.

3 comments:

  1. A few "novel uses" spring to mind...

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  2. LOL...Jacek!!Well...at least it will get people out of the chair moving around..(dreams about "novel uses")

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  3. they actually made object editing demo so you can check it out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqwUn_KgrDQ
    but
    imho... there is no way i can "switch gears" like guy in demo, and do it faster than i can do it with mouse and keyboard :)
    now, maybe with some power helmet that might KNOW what i want to build, and then translate that into SL would be soooooooo sweet :P

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