Kinect Based Whole Building Breakout

mikejuk writes with a light piece in I Programmer about a neat Kinect and gigantic projector hack. From the article: "If you remember Breakout — rows of blocks a the top of the screen and a paddle to bounce a ball into them to destroy a block — then you might not feel nostalgic about it. After all, it was a very limited sort of game. However, take one Kinect and one building and you have something quite different when you use it to create a Breakout game. The bricks, ball and paddle all projected onto an old building and the player moves from side-to-side to control the paddle. The player's position is being detected by a Kinect, is there no end to the fun you can have with this gadget. The really clever bit, and you might not notice it unless you look closely at the video, is that the ball bounces off real architectural features of the building — like the windows, for example."

Comments

Stupid

[kamapuaa]

Thought it might have incorporated the building architecture or something sort of cool. Instead, this is just a 80s video game projected against a blank wall at night. Instead of pressing the button to go left, you lean to the left to go left, the same as every other Kinect game but much simpler. Totally unimpressive.

Re:Stupid

[denaje]

Did you even read the summary or watch the video? "The really clever bit, and you might not notice it unless you look closely at the video, is that the ball bounces off real architectural features of the building — like the windows, for example." Maybe you think it's unimpressive, but many people would find this really cool. And face it...if you walked by a building that was playing a giant version of breakout, you wouldn't walk by without looking twice.

Re:Stupid

[kamapuaa]

There was a dark spot on the wall that the ball went right through. Aside from the dimensions of the playing field corresponding to the dimensions of the building, there wasn't a building-game correspondence. Even if there was, it still wouldn't be impressive, but the story summary and the website talk like this 80s video game projected against a wall is really something amazing, when it simply isn't.

This isn't nearly as impressive as those displays on the ground where there's a projected soccer ball field where the ball can be kicked. And that is cheesy shit that has been around for five or ten years.

Maybe the video didn't help, with the focus problems and the music video feel.

Re:Stupid

[Charliemopps]

Sorry, I gotta agree with kamapuaa, I didn't see it bounce off a damned think, yet saw it pass through numerous obvious windows and such. This seemed to be more about their fancy projector than the actual game. The guy barely leaned form left to right to move it. I'd rather have seen the padded EXACTLY where the player stood, and the player having to run from one side of the building to the other in order to move the paddle.

Wh... what? WHY?!

[eyenot]

Why would Kinect construct a building just to base the whole thing off a game of "Breakout"? Won't the building just be demolished? Why did Microsoft create an entire venture out of Kinect, anyway, when it was doing just fine as a product? God, corporate suicide is all over the news, these days. What's wrong with people?!