Making the Kinect do amazing things

Oliver Kreylos, a computer scientist who specializes in virtual reality and 3-D graphics, has hacked Microsoft’s new Kinect gaming device and has used it to  create “holographic” video images that can be rotated on a computer screen.




Mr. Kreylos is part of a crowd of programmers, roboticists and tinkerers who are getting the Kinect to do things it was not really meant to do. The attraction of the device is that it is outfitted with cameras, sensors and software that let it detect movement, depth, and the shape and position of the human body.

Building a device with the Kinect’s capabilities would require “thousands of dollars, multiple Ph.D.’s and dozens of months,” said Limor Fried, an engineer and founder of Adafruit Industries, a store in New York that sells supplies for experimental hardware projects. “You can just buy this at any game store for $150.”