Full Body Dance Dance Revolution

tasty_beanburger writes "NewScientistTech has a story about a full body version of Dance Dance Revolution. It uses vision recognition to award points after assessing a player's ability to correctly mimic silhouetted dance shapes. Check out the video clip of it being demoed at SIGGRAPH 2006."

Comments

Re:Translate Sign Language

[The Living Fractal]

Hey now, DDD has some practical use. A video game that actually involves burning calories is probably just what the US needs, and more of it. Though your original point is well taken.

TLF

Re:But I still need to pay rent!

[RobertB-DC]

Seems like a lot of work for something that isn't that novel. I sense that a DDR with additional EyeToy functionality would be just as good, and I already *have* most everything for that.

Indeed. Both DDR Extreme (and its sequel, DDR Extreme 2) have EyeToy support and include a "Hands and Feet" mode. You're supposed to supplement the foot movement with left and right hand movement. It doesn't give the whole-body positioning that the article discusses, which is a *good* thing.

Konami's simplified method of adding upper-body "dancing" gives you more flexibility to come up with a "routine" of your own. The article's suggestion of a system that requires you to put your body in a precise position is pretty goofy by comparison. It would be like a version of DDR that requires you to use a particular foot to hit a pad -- sacrificing gameplay flexibility for an "enhanced workout".

Plus, the manual for DDR Extreme 2 (which I just bought for my teenage daughters and my long-past-teenage self) suggests only that the background be contrasting, without a lot of motion. No requirement that it be white and illuminated. I guess Konami figured out how to do motion detection in the real world after all.

You know, there's a good argument here that university research types ought to spend more time in the freshman dorms before they announce their "new" discoveries, especially if they're based on a popular video game.

Re:The Coolest Tech Always Starts Useless

[Aladrin]

with nearly 2/3 of the nation considered "obese," who's actually going to use this?

You know, I think that's exactly the same thing they said about DDR.

Re:Translate Sign Language

[diersing]

Seriously, you think fat kids don't exercise because video games don't burn calories? If they didn't have video games they'd be playing board games, or reading, or eating, or sitting, or sleeping, or getting high, or making videos of themselves like they were in star wars, or watching star wars, or shooting people from highway overpasses, or drinking, or watching anime, or....

The point is, fat kids aren't fat because video games don't meet their daily allotment of exercise. Personal responsability and lack of parental teaching of personal responability is to blame. We live in a culture where nothing is ever our fault, not when I can take this pill to feel better. And since when is being fat justification for a handicap parking placard? Shouldn't we as a society force the obese to park as far away as possible?

DDR

[The Famous Brett Wat]

A video game that actually involves burning calories is probably just what the US needs, and more of it.

Not just the US, either: there are plenty of places with obesity issues. But for a good aerobic workout, you don't need DDD: DDR and its ilk will do nicely. Heck, I've lost about 10kg by exercising with StepMania in recent months, and most of the time I don't even use the dance-pad, let alone some fancy-schmancy video-based detector.