Ping 113: 3D Human face, Windows 7, Microsoft Fashion, Excel Challenge

Year after year, week after week- Ping delivers you the hottest Microsoft stories.
Bing: best in search effectiveness
Hi Laura and Paul, I was going to comment on the last episode, but as usual, I ended up following the links to the stories and checking both of your tweets and then eventually I kind of forgot what I was going to say.
One thing I was going to comment on was the Perfecting the 3D human face story and how it kinects (yes, I'm using that as a verb) with Kinect Fusion and other things and here today you talk all about it; there were definitely great ideas mentioned. The possibilities seem endless to me.
"Hot Searches" actually sounds like a good idea. I think there are indeed way too many people who do not know to search. They need to be taught. It's either that or you learn by trial and error and that's not good for something that has become a core life skill.
The 'Fast Async' link seems to be broken.
Speaking of Minecraft, it would be super duper cool if you could go the other direction and auto generate worlds/environments based on input from the kinect. I would love to put a laptop in my backpack, head mount my kinect and create the world around me in 1x1x1m virtual cubes. May need to hook it to my wp for position data. hmm.
@dtower: Yes, exactly ... using an amazingly simple (and fun) tool for building 3D models, you could scan KinectFusion models in, manipulate them in Minecraft and print them out. There are excellent proofs of concept for all the pieces except a few minor details.
That 3D Kinect stuff looks pretty smart, can't wait to see what they do with it when they bring it into the games space.
Oh Laura, I know you are Mensa material I was just trying to make Paul feel better as he isn't
3 hours ago,IRB wrote
That 3D Kinect stuff looks pretty smart, can't wait to see what they do with it when they bring it into the games space.
Oh Laura, I know you are Mensa material I was just trying to make Paul feel better as he isn't
Isn't there allready something familliar in the Kinect labs where you can scan items then they become a 3D object which you can play with? However, this is far more interesting ^^
And Paul is just way too smart to be in Mesna =D
- Martin
Now let me quote from last week:
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Wait, did you guys not cover the IE9 malware topic in this episode? I don't remember you talking about it but it's in the show notes/strapline.
What about combining the 3D Kinect mapping with Live Maps / Photosynth to sell a property? Imagine being able to "walk" your potential new home. Or being able to "strip away" the clutter and nick knacks of the current resident, and virtually test to see if your couch will fit.
A few potential Kinect "money-spinner" here, and by "money-spinners" I mean laughs.
Kinect Kong -> See how many aeroplanes you can grap.
Kinect Fireman -> 2 Player mode pump that engine.
Kinect Gasm -> PG 18+ (A Tweaking and a Stroking )
Kinect Pole -> Pole Dancing
Kinect Jenga
Kinect Twister
Kinect Dance Off -> The interpretive dance game.
Example 1Example 2 (Bing "Fast and Loose" interpretive dance)
Kinect Band -> Drums
3 hours ago,Adam​Speight2008 wrote
What about combining the 3D Kinect mapping with Live Maps / Photosynth to sell a property? Imagine being able to "walk" your potential new home. Or being able to "strip away" the clutter and nick knacks of the current resident, and virtually test to see if your couch will fit.
I was thinking about the exactly same thing! I have seen Microsoft showing some 3D software on Windows Phone which makes a 3D model of an object which you take images of, which was powered by Photosynth. (And if I'm not wrong, Laura was demonstrating this)
Laura, a tip for throwing the 9 guys, keep your elbow under your hand and throw it like a basket ball. you are throwing it with your elbow out which gives a weird trajectory.
PAUL GOT PRANKED!!!
Tricked to dress up as King Kong and paint his face blue!!!
So funny
Go check the Channel 9 video out with Dan and Laura called Pranking Softies.
You now, what someone needs to do with the KinectFusion is mount a Kinect on the car and drive around town with it and map their city. It's a bummer the depth field on the Kinect isn't very powerful beyond the size of a living room.
I work as a developer in the civil engineering space and I was trying to get the group that is typically responsible for digital environment recreation to take a look at doing this with a Kinect nearly on the day the OpenNI framework showed up on the internet. The usage of the idea for engineering purposes are completely endless, but the cameras on the Kinect itself is too weak and would need to be improved.
In a different direction all together would be icing on the cake to investigate the miniaturization of the Kinect depth system for usage on mobile devices (yeah like a cellphone). If that happens I demand to be employed by MS so I can help in some sort.
So, who's the Kinect Fruit Ninjas out there beside me? I need ninja competition. Btw, does anyone know why Fruit Ninja doesn't have Mangosteen in the game? It's the "Queen of Fruit"!
On the suggested games:
Kinect Kong
Kinect-the-dots (hahahaha)
Kinect-Four
Kinect-Feather (some sort of weird bird game where the player is a bird). Kinect of a feather, fly together?
Yeah and Windows Phones + XBox 360 in real-time working with each other. Very cool. Either as a controller or what has been leaked already for in-room multiplayer for Kinect games.
@xepwn: I think the Bing maps and Photosynth team are probably already thinking about how to use the Kinect to augment 3D maps. Also as others have mentioned, using underlying Photosynth technology to map textures to KinectFusion generated models.
Laura is right there are a couple of X-BOX live titles that are below 2.99....there are 2 that are FREE
45 minutes ago,masukuma wrote
Laura is right there are a couple of X-BOX live titles that are below 2.99....there are 2 that are FREE
There are 3 if you are lukcy enough to be stateside. Sukdoku, Minesweeper and Flowerz
Yeah, but I KinectFusion is available now to us non-Microsoft employees. I admit the Photosynth stuff is neat and hopefully the Bing maps thing will be available soon. I guess my argument is when (or if)? vs. now. The downside of Photosynth and Bing is that it's not very useful for stuff you'd want to use with CAD.
mmm....
you do realize what mensa means in Spanish right....
check it out
http://www.freetranslation.com/