Kinect socket server hack brings gesture recognition to Flash, Silverlight, and more

Thanks to the clever work of Blitz, a marketing agency, you will soon be able to easily interface any program to Microsoft Kinect. Rather than having to hack at the low-level C++ OpenKinect driver, Blitz's solution is to create a socket server, which other programs -- including Flash and Silverlight websites -- can then interrogate.

The installation process is a bit finickity -- it's a very quick and dirty hack -- but the potential applications are immense. Take a look at the demo video from Blitz (after the break), and then imagine playing all of our Time Wasters with just a few hand gestures...

It should be noted that this doesn't only apply to 'rich' technologies like Flash and Silverlight, either. JavaScript could be used to communicate with the socket server, and without a browser-specific extension, like the one used by DepthJS.

Blitz says that it will release the source code for the project later today, at 8 AM Pacific Time, on its Labs site.

Tags: blitz, flash, gaming, kinect, microsoft, microsoft kinect, MicrosoftKinect, silverlight, socket server, SocketServer