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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
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.
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!
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