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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."
The researchers believe the system could have more practical applications in the future. They say it could be used to automatically translate sign language, for example
Yes, if this technology exists, and slips out into mainstream, they better put it into more practical uses than DDD.
Perhaps this can help my sex life? I'll just slip in a porn DVD grab the wife and then get points for following the action on screen.
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
Well. With DDR my family looked like a bunch of kids with Tourette's Syndrome. Now they'll appear violently epileptic.
I can only hope they're unaware when this is released.
The technical angle on this software is what redeemed CmdrTaco from the "oh-this-will-only-make-me-look-more-dumb dept." Pretty interesting stuff, especially since it seems this stuff matures more rapidly once it goes into a game. (i.e. Flight Sims).
My ZooLoo
Sounds a lot like "Supermodel Shootout" from Indie Game Jam 2. Exactly like it, in fact.
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http://www.indiegamejam.com/ seems to be down at the moment, but there's an article at http://mag.awn.com/index.php?ltype=Special+Featur
will the system need to use DDR memory?
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
Does this mean that the fat kid who lives at the arcade and plays 3+ hours of DDR every day yet never loses weight isn't going to be able to play DDD, because his silhouette can't possibly match up with the figures on the screen? I think that's unfair. Give sweaty headband kid a chance!
I think Konami's already made a lot of these sorts of games before. The one that springs to mind is ParaParaParadise.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ParaParaParadise
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
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.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
I hope they're prepared for a legal onslaught from Apple.
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
The best part about going to the new "real life DDR" (a dance club) is that if you can get the moves down, the "score" part is way better than in the game!
stuff |
You know, I think that's exactly the same thing they said about DDR.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Dude It's called ParaParaParadise and it's been out since 2000.
The video hasn't suffered from the /. effect. I suspect this has to do with their codec choice. And with the OS choice of many /.ers.
As a DDR fan reporting from SIGGRAPH, I'm disappointed to say that the gameplay is more like striking a series of "poses" than actual dancing. "Okay, now put your arms straight up. Now put them in a V. Now lean over sideways. It's fun to stay at the Y-M-C-A! ..."
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
According to the American Obesity Association, 2/3 of the nation is overweight, not obese, and is wildly different than 2/3 being obese. Only about 30% of the nation is obese (which is still horrible, granted, but much better than 2/3).
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.
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
Oh yeah, Death Death Revolution
For sale: Parachute. Used once. Never opened. Small stain.
At first I thought there's no way you can get 3D motion from a single video frame (not a completely off-the-cuff comment, I know a thing or two about computer vision). Then the geometer in me said "but the dimensionality of the configuration space is limited by limb rigidity." Not every point on the body can be in any point in 3D space; e.g. the hand has to be ~12" from the elbow. If you can track the shoulder, elbow, and hand, you can estimate how long they are and deduce (up to some reflections) where they are in 3D space based on the rigid body kinematics (assuming the shoulder to be fixed as an example). Eliminate the reflections by ruling out those that would violate anatomically impossible poses and/or produce occlusions. It has flaws, but I'm curious if anyone's tried it. An old prof of mine was working on something similar involving tracking limb movement for pattern recognition, so it wouldn't surprise me if someone has looked into this.
:)
That's right, I just generated and solved my own argument. The electronic extension of the voices in my head.
m0nstr42.blogspot.com