14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft's Kinect has been designed in order to bring full-body control to the company's Xbox 360 gaming console, so the idea of using the device (after going through the whole hacking process) in order to control gameplay on a PC actually seems to be pretty sound.
And, in fact, that's just what a developer called Diarmuid Wrenne has managed to achieve, albeit at a rather limited scale, since he's come up with a way to control the classic FPS Quake using a Kinect.
Nevertheless, as you'll be able to see for yourselves, the control process is far from what we'd call easy to implement, since it involves not only the Kinect itself, but also an iMac and a Linux laptop.
But we'll let Mr. Wrenne explain in his own words what this is all about: I used the kinect attached to a linux laptop with a python based web server serving up point data to an iMac. The iMac runs a java program that calls the Linux web server and generates key and mouse events. Quake live is set up with the appropriate keystrokes. When the java program starts it gives me 15 seconds to get onto Quake. As I move my hurley around in front of the kinect, you can see the quake environment moving appropriately. Unfortunately, if you take a very close look at the video, you'll immediately be able to notice that the gameplay is really slow, the level of delay between the body movements and their translation into the game being simply too high (especially since we're talking about a FPS title, which are notorious for requiring top reaction times and speeds).
On the other hand, we're certainly expecting to see some FPS titles being developed/adapted for the un-hacked (Xbox 360-only) Kinect by some of the world's best-known game publishers, so perhaps there's still a chance for a good-quality implementation on the hacked model as well.