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Full Body Tracking
Like this article? We recommend
Like this article? We recommend
Like this article? We recommend
Full Body Tracking
Full body tracking, or skeletal tracking, is a widely used function that has been implemented in most games over the past year. Games that heavily use this function are Kinect Adventures, Kinect Sports 2, Dance Central 2, Your Shape Fitness Evolved, Fruit Ninja Kinect, Sesame Street Once Upon a Monster, and even Forza Motorsport 4—among others.
- Fruit Ninja Kinect uses the full body to create a shadow of you on the TV as various types of fruit fly into the air for you to chop or kick before they fall off of the screen.
- Sesame Street Once Upon a Monster uses your full body to control Elmo and Cookie Monster in different game sequences throughout the six enchanting chapters told as the game journey unfolds. Toddlers and parents can play together in two-player co-op mode to do monster poses and jump around together in a way that brings a laugh to even any old scrooge.
- Dance Central 2 tracks all aspects of your body to compare in almost real time your limbs' positions to the characters on screen in both one-player and two-player modes. Icons consisting of dance position drawings in small rectangles scroll up to the right and left sides of the screen to indicate the timing of when you need to get your body into the next dance position.
- Forza Motorsport 4 has Autovista mode, in which you can walk around, up to, and into exotic cars. Walking toward your TV is like walking up to the car while leaning left or right walks you around the car. As you are facing the door of a car you can move your hand in front of you to grab the door handle and open the car door. Walking forward again sets in motion the first-person perspective of stepping into the car and sitting down. From there, you can look around the interior just by the movement of your body for an incredibly detailed view as if you were car shopping.
- Halo Combat Evolved Anniversary uses arm tracking in the library mode to view enemies and weapons that you have collected throughout the game as if they were trophies. Moving your hand left or right rotates the object on a horizontal plane for viewing. The library objects are like trophies because you must add them to the library via voice control as you are playing through the game (more on that later). The library is not accessible unless a Kinect is attached to the console and only the objects you have scanned in the game are viewable in the library.
- Forza Motorsport 4 uses arm tracking in local multiplayer split screen mode where you and a friend use your arms to pretend you are steering a wheel. This mode is really made for casual players that want to get in and out without learning the controls since steering is the only control you have. The game controls the gas and brake pedals for you so hard core gamers will still want to steer clear from this mode and pull out their real controller or steering peripheral and enable head-tracking for the true Forza experience.
- Gunstringer has brought Kinect platform game control to an entirely new level. In the same way that Halo Combat Evolved created the standard for first person shooters controls, Gunstringer has created what should be the standard for Kinect platform game controls. Using your left hand to lean left, lean right, move left, move right, or jump while using your right hand to highlight your enemies and shoot is such a simple concept that works exceptionally.
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Figure 1 Opening a door in Forza Motorsport 4 Autovista mode to reveal the interior of this exotic car
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Figure 2 Gunstringer requires two arms to play well, but play well it does.