Hodgman, what DO you understand? What do you think I want to do?

You're proposing a 3D-avatar-based internet chat-room, where the avatars are ghostly Kinnect point-clouds -- is that right?

According to what I understand is that you want to use kinekt to make people see each other online as point clouds?
Although I'm not sure why the focus on point rendering. Is it an artistic thing?

Although I'm not sure why the focus on point rendering. Is it an artistic thing?[/quote]I see two options: fully textured 3D shapes cut in half or black and white points in space. Yes it is an artistic thing. The goal is to randomly meet new people and hear other people chat in Dolby Surround or DD5.1. So being the ghost you move around and see some interesting conversation going on. Then you steer your character, which is a point cloud of yourself, over there and you can listen and participate in other people's talks. This would use the kinects abilities, the skeleton, the point cloud and the microphones. Maybe even without level design as this would distract from the characters but all white or all black and just the ghosts hovering around. Like a mixture of chatroulette and 2nd life. But with natural movement of natural characters. Also the software will not allow people to enter the virtual realm that do not present themselves in front of the kinect. So it's all but anonymous.

People logging in to the system are being shown immediately, by slowly fading in.

So as we all know what I picture, what are your thoughts regarding the idea? What do you like what do you not like? If you don't like me I can live with that as it is about the idea here, not me, not you, just the idea of a personalized meeting using the kinect. Only for those using the kinect on a computer.

Also I do not want to do it on my own, there is a lot included - the network backbone - how to connect people to display the same on every computer. How to save bandwidth, for instance by only showing people in your direct surrounding and having a compass showing where others are and only being able to listen to those that are close to you. Also which engine to use. Browser based or software based? Java, C#, C++?

Sounds interesting and really challenging. You could probably even use the kinect to sample textures from the person and then apply the colors to the ingame model. Though, this would probably take sex cams to a whole new level.

Anyway: How would you move around in the world? Would you actually move around in your living room or use a controller to move your character? Can people rotate their avatars? Does that involve rotating their bodies? How would people still see the screen if they have to rotate their bodies to rotate their avatar? If a controller can be used to rotate their avatar, how does the generated point cloud work when it needs to sample someones back but can only see their front?

I don't understand the point of this whole thing. WHY would you want this?

I don't understand the point of this whole thing. WHY would you want this?

I guess he's trying to move towards a 'MetaVerse' kinda of set up, such as the one in Neal Stephenson's 'Snow Crash'?

Off-hand I don't like the idea of having to interact in front of a kinect to achieve this. It introduces all kinds of issues such as how do you move through 3D space? Sure its possible to come up with numerous control methods, many are just plain silly and in the end they all result in breaking the suspension of disbelief. Mind you there are some solutions assuming money no object such as the 'omni-directional treadmill' as used in the Gadget show 'Combat Simulator' (http://fwd.channel5.com/gadget-show/videos/challenge/gadget-sim-part-3)

However when I start thinking back to Snow Crash and some of the potential of kinect I can't help but feel there might be something in this. Skeleton tracking is very reliable as long as you don't deliberately try to break it, it can even track you as you turn 360 on the spot. So you could attach this to either a mesh of yourself, obtained from the kinect or applied to pre-made avatars. Thus allowing you to be virtually 'projected' into a 3d world.

Obviously such a world is not going to be like World of Warcraft, but that's no bad thing, in fact this approach will probably push the experience into a new or at least different genre of gameplay or interaction. Could be a very interesting concept, might go and dig out Snow Crash and give it a read again.