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We're at week 4 of the Ultimate Coder Challenge[^] and at this point we're starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. For some that's a scary sight.
Sixense[^] are well on their way to creating a virtual sock-puppet, but one that doesn't have the usual awful connotations of an online sock-puppet. This ons is, actually, a sock puppet. To be brutally frank what they have also done is shone a light onto some of the limitations inherent in the depth camera's abilities that have forced them to use slightly nonstandard sock puppet hand gestures (See IEEE Std 4802.01 - Sock Puppet Hand Control Standard 1104). IT would be a win if they could get past this limitation.
Lee[^] has gone ahead and written Yet Another Video Conferencing bus, 'cause, y'know, he has nothing better to do. I know - I just know - that he's hacked his DVR at home to Just Work Better, and his microwave is probably cowering behind the fridge screaming "Make it go away!". He has, however, produced a prototype of a conference system with his 3D avatar injected. I can't help but wonder why he didn't test his virtual teleportation on an assistant[^] first.
Simian[^] focussed mostly on their demo environment. A 3D Japanese themed pottery wheel. Probably best just to think about that for a while.
Pete[^] has switched from Aussie Pub rock to Canadian Top 40 with a little Creedance thrown in. I'm of two minds about this. He's also apologising for providing detailed coding explanation, and I'm sorry Pete but you just lost points on this. I want details. I want code. This is a coding challenge by coders for a large coding audience braying for blood. Well, a large coding audience, at least.
Pete's also hit the inevitable Voice Control Brick Wall. I'm guessing, being on the wrong end of voice control far too often, that it could be an accent issue, so I'd be interested to hear what sort of success those with a (reasonably neutral) US accent have had. Accent, to me, is the 21st century equivalent of the Date format. What, exactly, does 6/7/2013 represent without locale context? The same happens with voice. So if Pete can't talk to his app he's going to have his app talk to him. Just please include a Mute button.
Eskil[^] doesn't provide much in the way of concrete progress on the framework he's building, but does provide a walkthrough of his non-OO approach to creating and rendering UI elements. I'll be honest and say I'm not a fan of his approach. OO development helps separate who is responsible for what, and while that may not result in the tersest of code, it does promote maintainability.
Code Monkeys[^] have touched upon something that you can be sure that the likes of Apple, Google and the Kinect team at Microsoft all know: gesture based UIs are tiring. You know why Tom Cruise's character in Minority Report was so ripped? It's because he was doing 12hr days of shoulder and ab work while using those gesture gloves of his. 12 hours? Try 4 minutes.
Infrared5[^] have revealed another little worm in the Apple: gaze tracking has not been implemented in the PC SDK. It will be added later. So what did the guys do? They slammed their foot on the clutch, dropped from C# down to C++, dropped the clutch and left billowing smoke in their wake. This is exactly what I want to see from a contestant: a dammit-I'll-do-it-myself approach to dealing with issues. Now if only they had a little AC/DC playing in the background...
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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Thanks for the update Chris, and I'll keep the code coming - although I think you'll find that I was apologising that non coders aren't as awesome as we are. My antipodean "rock" last week was Men At Work - damn, but it was real earworm music.
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