Finishing Touches

This past week I have put the finishing touches on the therapy games that I developed using the Kinect and Looking Glass.  Both games (Alien Robot vs UFOs and Painting the Roses Red), which feature hand tracking, now center the user even if they are not perfectly centered infront of the Kinect camera.  Both games use an exponential weighted average to smooth the kinect data and minimize jitter caused by using a single joint to move an object on screen.  Some jitter is noticable, but it has been minimized as using too many data points in smoothing causes some on screen latency.  Both games adjust for a user's body size by measuring the user's arm length and adjusting the user's range accordingly.  Both games also feature a sensitivity factor that can be used to adjust the game for user's of differing abilities.  Individuals with normal arm range of motion can set the sensitivity factor at a "1", and those with motor impairments can choose a setting of 2 to 10 to make smaller hand movements result in more pronounced movements on screen.