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So...I put it up on codeplex (actually, it was already there, I had just obscured the title and description so it wouldn't show up in searches).

Here's a link to the project page.

Understand that I know nothing about maintaining an open source project, so if you have any suggestions (license to use, page organization, etc) let me know. Also, know that I'm still learning in regards to good code design and architecture so any core improvements are welcome. Actually...all changes are welcome as long as they're in the same spirit of things (Kinect, Metro, etc).

Did you mean to post the more recent link?

Just noticed this...pretty awesome!

Wow, that's awesome.

So, I was thinking of actually open sourcing the project (if my team agrees) so that other people (like you guys) could build on top of it. Would any of you be interested in helping create a solid NUI?

1 hour ago, Dr Herbie wrote

genuine photo

I actually don't quite look like my avatar in real life. I'm sorry if I gave anyone that impression. 

The Kinect will be in pain.

I don't think the Kinect can handle that. The camera might break.

Surely you could have leveraged Kinect to enhance your bikini pictures upon import. 

@Maddus: I realize my edits to the OP last night were not actually saved so I can now see why you might think the guy is "waving his arm looking for the cursor". We constructed what is known as the "invisible touch screen." Imagine an invisible surface in front of you...you can touch it at any point to interact with the display.

@Bas: We user tested push to select and it didn't seem to work well at all. Of course, at that time I was using the OpenNI SDK,so I'm not sure if the unreliability was attributed to that. My guess is not. We found that the "push" gesture opened up a lot of variability. Some envisioned a push as simply tapping their fingers forward...others exaggerated their entire hand forward. Ultimately, you can't support both instances because that will just get confusing (might complicating other scenarios in which subtle gestures might come about). Not requiring a push removes consideration of the z-axis with restricts the space of actions down to something more reasonable (2D in a 3D world). It's also no surprise that the Xbox team and most games limit it to a "hold to select".

But, I do love how Kinect is used in Your Shape...unfortunately, I picked up that game towards the end of the final push of our project. I would have loved to implement their style of push to select as that was just brilliant. If you look closely (if the video doesn't suck as much), we did carry over the progress-bar-like feedback from Your Shape when you hold over an item. If we had more time, we would have definitely explored incorporating the angle of the user's arm in the selection process.

He's not waving. His hand reached the edge of the content (and he definitely knows what the interface is doing since the actions are controlled). Also, there isn't a cursor...you're moving the entire screen.

I'm not sure how projecting something behind the UI would help, but we did consider having a smaller depth view of the user in the corner for reference (like in the Xbox UI). But from user testing, we never ended up needing that as we had enough feedback/indicators to allow users to play around with the system to get better acquainted. On average, users reached mastery within 15-20 secs. Maybe a tiny depth view would decrease that down to 5 secs? Definitely a good suggestion.