Can a kinect camera for x-box support me to develop an application? i am not sure for that because it is used for x-box.
Yes, it can. I have used it for this for months now. If by develop an application you mean a C# or C++ then yes, you can get the drivers if you download the Kinect for Windows SDK.
I am told you can also get drivers for Linux using OpenNI if that is what you are looking for. The only nuance is that if you want to compile to a standalone EXE you must pay for a license to the Kinect for Windows SDK development team. However, since you only asked if you could develop, the answer is yes. Also, there is a depth limitation placed on the Kinect for Xbox that is not present on the Kinect for Windows.
Related
KaiOS is "a web-based mobile operating system that is based on Linux kernel forked from B2G (Boot to Gecko), an open source community-driven successor of Firefox OS which was discontinued by Mozilla in 2016. (As written on its Wikipedia Article)
I wanted to use Unity Game Engine to make a game for it but I have not seen KaiOS as one of the available platforms to build for.
Is it possible that one of the platforms that Unity builds for (such as HTML5) can be made somehow compatible for KaiOS? Are there any other available tools I can use? Or will I have to work on the raw game from scratch?
The answer is no:
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/UnityCloudBuildSupportedPlatforms.html
Sorry to be a let down. It does support iOS though.
EDIT
If you put a little more work into it using HTML5, then yes.
I want to develop a game using Unity + Kinect, as I understand Unity does not support the official Kinect SDK so I have to find another way. I saw that some guys use ZigFu which seems to not have a good Documentation and has a $200 licence. Is there any other easy way to make things work between Kinect and Unity? If I choose to not use Unity, what other tools exist that support the official C# Kinect SDK to develop a game?
The Official Microsoft Kinect SDK should be easy to plug into the XNA Game Studio.
There should articles on the web and samples shipping with the SDK.
Unfortunately I haven't used the MS Kinect SDK since version 1.5. I'm hoping there are updated guides/tutorials available for the latest SDK.
UPDATE
One workaround would using multiple applications talking to each via a TCP/UDP socket (OSC is pretty easy to use for example). The idea is you use what you prefer for the kinect tracking, but send a list of coordinates for the joint's positions and orientations to unity.
You should see this unity thread. It states that you cannot use the Kinect SDK with Unity, as the frameworks are not correct. However that was a different version.
Actually, it says you can use it as this sample shows.
Note that there are many errors people seem to be having with it. I don't know how much of that is people having poor code and how much is with the SDK.
guys i am working on a project which uses unity engien and kinect as input source ..now according to my knowledge there is not much support between unity and kinect sdk ..i have heard about zigfu framework but it is not giving me all functionalities i need..so what are options for me? im thinking to take some functionalities from zigfu and some from a background application build in .net 4.0 and using kinect official sdk ? can i connect to kinect via two interfaces at the same time? i.e zigfu and kinect sdk ....my background app will connect to unity via pipes ..is that agood option?
I've already done something similar. I'd like to use Unity 3D engine and do some interactions to animate the model using Kinect (Kinect SDK). Some functionality in Kinect SDK are not available in Zigfu, such as Hand Gripping detection.
Because Kinect SDK is suitable for WPF application, here is my solution :
Build your Unity into Unity Standalone (PC, Mac, Linux).
Create WPF application with Kinect stuff inside.
Add WindowsFormsHost inside your XAML of WPF application.
Embed your Unity Standalone into WPF using WindowsFormsHost.
To do a communication between WPF and Unity, you can use Raknet. It will work as socket does.
in my experience, its usually not a good idea to use "two of" something, when they both do the same thing. I've never heard of zigfu before, but it seems relatively easy to learn. Since its available as a unity plug in, it may be best to use that over kinect. The reason being that Unity isn't to "friendly" with third party applications.
If your aiming for XNA, its possible to convert easily if the plug-in doesn't already do it for you.
I Highly recommend looking over the unity forums, and the ZDK documentation.
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/127924-Zigfu-dev-kit-for-Unity3D-Product-Launch
I want to start creating games for Android/IOS. I have already created 2D games using XNA and I want to publish them on other platforms even PCs but my highest priority is Mobile platforms. As I said I am familiar with XNA so I need a similar Engine for 2D. It would be great if I could write once and publish on many platforms. Please dont suggest Unity or Unreal. They are not that easy when it comes to 2D.
By similar I mean, for example, how easy to draw a sprite on the screen.
Note: I am working on Windows so no Mac suggestions please.
Regards,
You may also want to consider MonoGame ( https://github.com/mono/MonoGame/ ) as that is also an Open Source, OpenGL implementation of XNA that currently has support for iOS, Android, MacOS X, Windows and recently Linux. It is now all ES 2.0 on the mobile platforms. Our biggest change is that we now support Windows 8, and have a DirectX 11 backend thanks to SharpDX. We now also have initial PlayStation mobile support.
Actually ExEn, is a fork of MonoGame( originally called XNATouch ).
For a list of games on the AppStore or Android Market place and even NaLC, currently using MonoGame look here -
http://monogame.codeplex.com/
I hope this helps.
D.
You might want to keep up on the project called ExEn, which has already successfully ported some XNA samples and smaller games to iPhone and Android. It requires relatively little work to port and refactor to these platforms.
I suggest you check out AndEngine, its an open-source 2d open-gl based game engine that has a strong community. If you want something that you can make cross platform games with check out LibGDX It too is free, open source and based on openGl but it also allows for 3d games. It is also cross platform so a game you write for android can be compiled for, Windows, MacOS (see below), Linux. It also has a really strong community.
Regarding iOS and OSX games you really can't make them unless you buy a Mac. Apple doesn't distribute their SDK for use on any other platform but their own. That said you could maybe get something working under VMWare
Check out MOAI SDK. It's completely free and open-source. It is in beta right now but it is still pretty good. Crimson Pirates for iOS was developed with it.
Right now it supports iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, and Linux. Really good. I thought I liked Cocos2D-x, which is a C++ variant of Cocos2d-iphone supporting windows, iOS (not Mac), and Android but not truely supporting desktop kinda made me like MOAI more.
You can use C++ with MOAI or you can use Lua (they highly encourage using Lua). Being built in C++ is really great because you get access to a vast amount of libraries and you can easily bind them to Lua.
You should try games development with cocos2d.
Cocos2d is one of the best 2d engines for ios/Android I have come across.
http://www.cocos2d-iphone.org/
It is openGL based free engine.
Regards,
Sam
These might be useful to you. However, the first two aren't free, but they have editions for both iOS and Android.
iOS:
http://ios.xamarin.com/
Android:
http://android.xamarin.com/
I've never used either of them, but it's something I've been looking into a bit.
Apparently it lets you run C# and .NET code on both iOS and Android which is pretty cool considering how much easier drawing and things like that are in XNA compared to Open GL ES 2.0. Not to mention the fact that you'd be using C# instead of objective C.
There's also a free open source version sponsored by the same people who make the two I listed above. This one lets you run C# and .NET code on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.
http://www.mono-project.com/Main_Page
I have been researching this topic intensively over the last few weeks.
I think the best solution for you is Marmalade, formerly known as Airplay SDK. It is actually more Windows-oriented than Mac (work in Visual Studio), although you still need a Mac for the final step of getting a signed app onto the store. It sounds like a very capable pure C++ product with iOS and Android as well as a bunch of other platforms, Personal license with splash screen $150 pa, single seat Professional $500 pa for all platforms. They have a 45 day trial license which I'm currently using.
I was tempted by MonoGame, could live with the $400 price tag for each platform (for the needed MonoTouch) but it is just way too buggy. The final straw was a combination of a bug causing it to crash all the samples on iOS5 and that keyboard input is broken on iOS.
Too be fair, I'm pretty sure that is all on the MonoGame side and was very impressed with how well MonoTouch worked and was looking forward to programming in c# with LINQ et al.
Since it is not obvious from the other answers, it should be noted to those who are unaware that the ExEn project and the MonoGame projects both build on the Monotouch platform from Xamarin (formerly from Novell) - which is a prerequisite for both for iOS games.
The Xamarin projects was mentioned in another answer as an alternative to Xna, but is really not. Monotouch and Mono for Android are a way to run C# and .NET on iPhone/iPad and Android.
Game development at least on the iPhone side, is typically done using OpenGL and OpenGL is also wrapped in Monotouch. The Xna implementations in Exen and MonoGame also uses OpenGL as the foundation as far as I know.
It should also be noted that Monotouch and Mono for Android are commercial products.
BTW: Exen also compiles to other platforms e.g. silverlight.
I want to develop an application which runs on iPhone / Android / Windows Phone 7 smartphones and is able to recognize a marker and place augmented reality content on it.
Is there any common framework which I could use for that task?
This is probably the closest you'll get:
http://nyatla.jp/nyartoolkit/wiki/index.php?FrontPage.en
Not sure about Android or iPhone, but Kevin Marshall has done some proof-of-concept work on Windows Phone 7. You should keep in mind though, that augmented reality on WP7 requires access to camera APIs that are not publicly available and as such any AR application on WP7 would not be available officially through the Marketplace. Device manfacturers (such as LG) have access to these APIs, which is how some AR applications already exist for WP7.
As Derek and Stefan point out, it appears that there are ports of the ARToolKit augmented reality framework for all three platforms.
On iPhone, you can see this in the VRToolkit sample application by Benjamin Loulier, which leverages the enhanced ARToolKitPlus library.
For Android, it looks like NyARToolkit is available, with this sample application (as pointed out by Stefan).
Finally, it looks like SLARToolKit is used in the Windows Phone 7 sample application here (as pointed out by Derek).
Be aware that this toolkit and its derivatives are licensed under the GPL:
IMPORTANT NOTICE REGARDING YOUR RIGHT
TO USE ARTOOLKIT:
ARToolKit is made available freely for
non-commercial use under the GNU
General Public License. Commercial
licenses to a professional
implementation of ARToolKit are
available for users for whom the GPL
is not suitable, or who require a
higher level of support, or who
require customization or other
specialist modifictions. Commercial
licenses are administered by
ARToolworks, Inc., Seattle, WA, USA.
I've seen people violating this license in their applications and derivative frameworks, so it's something to be aware of.
Did you check Layar?
AFAIK they do not support WP7 but I guess it's a matter of time.