14 DAY TRIAL // Ever since the first hacked drivers for Microsoft's Kinect made their way onto the Internet, we've seen plenty of cool implementations created by some intrepid developers, but it seems that the gaming accessory developed by the company from Redmond, paired with some homebrew software, can result in some even more spectacular applications, such as the virtual lightsaber created by Yankeyan.
To be perfectly honest, as true Star Wars fans, we've been eagerly waiting to see the first Kinect lightsaber application pop up, the aforementioned developer managing to achieve exactly this feat, and while we're still plenty of room for improvement, it's nevertheless a step in the right direction.
So, what Yankeyan did was to cleverly employ the OpenKinect drivers, along with image processing, tracking and rendering by OpenCV to create the real-time lightsaber effect on his PC.
Practically, as you can see in the video found at the end of this article, whenever Yankeyan picks up a stick, the computer tracks it and automatically adds the Lightsaber effects, in real time, the overall result being, in fact, a very cool one (especially if you happen to be a fan of the whole Star Wars universe).
In somewhat of as separate piece of news, it's very interesting to note that Microsoft seems to have changed its official position concerning the whole Kinect hacking story, leaning towards a more “relaxed” approach, as Digitizor reports.
So, while in the beginning they were threatening hackers with using just about any means necessary in order to ensure the fact that their hardware is not tampered with, the company from Redmond now claims that they've actually left the Kinect open by design, in order to encourage developers.
Way to mend up things, Microsoft, guess that those top execs of yours realized that, in this particular case, the old saying “if you can't fight them, join them” works best.