Watch YouTube Video Showcasing ICT-Tools to Play World of Warcraft with Microsoft Kinect

A video featuring FAAST, a new toolkit that facilitates integration of full-body control with games and VR applications, has been widely viewed on YouTube. The video shows FAAST creator Evan Suma, who is a postdoctoral researcher in the ICT Mixed Reality Lab, playing World of Warcraft using Microsoft Kinect. With the addition of FAAST, he is able to control game play using his body movements rather than a joystick, keyboard or mouse. Skip Rizzo, ICT’s associate director of medical virtual reality, speaks in the video about the implications of this work.
“I think the real compelling aspect of all this is that you can now take off-the-shelf games, content that’s already built, and emulate the keyboard actions with body movement,” Rizzo said. “This opens up the doorway for building rehabilitation exercises for people after a stroke or traumatic brain injury. And in an area that’s getting a lot of attention, the area of childhood obesity and diabetes.”
And perhaps equally important was Suma’s observation after using his new tool.
“Gameplay was surprisingly fun,” he said.