Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Friday, August 24, 2012

Play Exergames, Consume less energy


Energy intake and expenditure during sedentary screen time and motion-controlled video gaming
Television watching and playing of video games (VGs) are associated with higher energy intakes. Motion-controlled video games (MC) may be a healthier alternative to sedentary screen-based activities because of higher energy expenditures, but little is known about the effects of these games on energy intakes.
Energy intake, expenditure, and surplus (intake - expenditure) were compared during sedentary (television and VG) and active (MC) screen-time use.
Young adults (n = 120; 60 women) were randomly assigned to the following 3 groups: television watching, playing traditional VGs, or playing MCs for 1 h while snacks and beverages were provided. Energy intakes, energy expenditures, and appetites were measured.
Intakes across these 3 groups showed a trend toward a significant difference (P = 0.065). The energy expenditure (P < 0.001) was higher, and the energy surplus (P = 0.038) was lower, in MC than in television or VG groups. All conditions produced a mean (SD) energy surplus as follows: 638 408 kcal in television, 655 533 kcal in VG, and 376 487 kcal in MC groups. The OR for consuming ≥500 kcal in the television compared with the MC group was 3.2 (95% CI: 1.2, 8.4). Secondary analyses, in which the 2 sedentary conditions were collapsed, showed an intake that was 178 kcal (95% CI: 8, 349 kcal) lower in the MC condition than in the sedentary groups (television and VG).
MCs may be a healthier alternative to sedentary screen time because of a lower energy surplus, but the playing of these games still resulted in a positive energy balance.
Source: http://www.ajcn.org/content/96/2/234.short

Thursday, August 23, 2012

Overcoming the truth

Be hold, they can see if you lie with the way you move the sensor.

Duran, N. D., Dale, R., & McNamara, D. S. (2010). The action dynamics of overcoming the truth. Psychon Bull Rev, 17(4), 486-491.

A convincing deceiver must act in discordance with their knowledge of the truth. To do so requires the deceiver to resolve competition between what is known to be true and what is intended to be false. We investigated the temporal signature of this competition by examining the action dynamics of arm movement while participants responded falsely or truthfully to autobiographical information. The participants answered no or yes by navigating a Nintendo Wii Remote to no and yes regions on a large projector screen. Trajectory analyses of the fine-grained arm movements show increased complexity in false responding relative to truthful responding, with the greatest difference in false yes answers. The dynamic motor movements also reveal greater strength of competition during the act of false responding, thereby extending traditional response time measures that capture latent competition alone. These results suggest that deceptive processes may be detectable when action is allowed to covary with thought. Supplemental figures and a list of the sentence stimuli may be downloaded from http://pbr.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.

Source: http://www.springerlink.com/content/p340447766023087/

Casual Exergames


Just got acquainted with the new term "Casual Exergame" which is a branch of Exergames following these rules:

Easy to learn. Casual games should have limited instructions, provide rules that are easy to learn, and guide players with a clear and consistent user interface.
Simple controls. Casual games should take advantage of assumed knowledge, such as drag, drop and click.
Play in a relatively short play period. Casual games should be able to be enjoyed in a series of short time increments, though sometimes people play one level after another for many hours. Most casual games’ play intervals are between 5 and 15 minutes to complete a level.
Reduced complexity and non-punishing game play. Casual games allow depth and complexity to emerge from the player’s basic actions instead of making the player master a large and complex set of actions.
Family friendly. The IGDA Casual Games SIG deems that casual games should not contain objectionable content, such as overt violence, or sexuality. The CGA agrees that casual games should appeal to people of all ages, genders and nationalities. In recent years, casual games have been developed (e.g., games rated 17+ for Apple’s iPad) that do not adhere to this criterion.

Source: http://hci.usask.ca/uploads/233-ICEC_GrabApple_cameraReady.pdf

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Snake game now turns into a fitness tool


Do you remember Snake game on Nokia phones? Now imagine playing this game in a football field with GPS and in virtual. Luca Chittaro and Riccardo Sioni from Human-Computer Interaction Lab of Udine implemented this idea. Article is here.


Abstract. Exergames (video games that combine exercise and play) could encourage physical activity by making it more enjoyable. Mobile devices are an interesting platform for exergames because they can support outdoors activities such as walking and running. Different mobile exergames have been proposed in the literature, and typically evaluated with informal interviews and ad–hoc questionnaires. The research we present in this paper had two main goals. First, we wanted to design a fun and easy-to-use mobile exergame to encourage walking. To this purpose, we propose a location–based version of the classic Snake mobile game, in which users can control the snake by walking. Second, we wanted to introduce important measures (such as users’ attitude towards walking) in the evaluation of exergames, by adopting validated questionnaires employed in the medical literature. The results of the study presented in this paper shed light on how differences in users’ lifestyle can be related to exergame enjoyment and to attitude change fostered by the exergame.
Keywords: Mobile games, Exergames, Location–based games, Attitude change

Friday, June 1, 2012

3d Kinect

http://youtu.be/CSBDY0RuhS4

Using 3 Kinects simultaneously creates a 3D model.
The key behind Shake’n’Sense is to minimally vibrate a Kinect camera using an offset-weight vibration motor and thereby to artificially introduce motion blur.

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

How to set up Kinect?

Article provided from PopSci!

Clear Your Space You'll have to rearrange your living room, but Kinect is worth it Microsoft
So you've decided to spring for a Microsoft Kinect (or you're buying one as a gift, or you're planning on getting one as a gift), eh? Congratulations! It's great (mostly)! But here's the thing: Not every living room can handle the Kinect, and even in the ones that can, there are some specifics you may not realize that can really make the Kinect experience better (without hacking). Here's our guide to making sure you get the most out of this futuristic arm-flailing fun.

The Space

Your actual living room space is the most immediately important variable in setting up a Kinect, and also really the only one that can be a dealbreaker. Make no mistake: You need a large living room, in the right shape, to be able to use the Kinect at all. The Kinect requires a large rectangular space free of obstacles in front of the TV, so get comfortable with hauling your coffee table away when you want to play.
Microsoft suggests a space of six feet by six feet in front of the Kinect sensor for one player, and eight feet by six feet for two players. (The Kinect can currently only handle two players at once, though that'll probably change in the future.) In my experience, those numbers are the bare minimum--for comfortable and spacious play, I'd recommend eight-by-six for one player and ten-by-six for two players. Get ready to shove your couch backwards and haul your coffee table into the kitchen--it's a necessary evil of playing Kinect.
Even the bare minimum is going to disqualify a lot of living rooms, due either to shape (that long and skinny living room may be big on paper, but it won't work here) or size. Sorry to pretty much rule out the entire island of Manhattan, but before you buy a Kinect, break out the measuring tape.

The Sensor

The sensor is an amazing piece of hardware-software synergy, and luckily, it's actually a pretty flexible device. Its movable head allows it to aim up or down, so you have a pretty lenient set of rules as to where it can be placed. Microsoft recommends between two and six feet off the ground, either directly below or above your TV, and centered with it. In my experience, two feet above the ground might be a little low, especially if your living room isn't enormous--it'll be tricky for the sensor to capture both your feet and head.

Kinect Sensor Placement:  Microsoft
Above the TV sounds great on paper, but unless you want your TV to get really friendly with a lot of duct tape, you'll need to buy the separate Kinect TV mount, which costs $40. Luckily, the sensor works just fine when placed on your TV stand. Make sure to move it as close to the edge as possible, so its view isn't blocked by the stand itself, and feel free to stack it on some DVD cases or whatever to give it a little extra height.
Don't bother trying to tilt the sensor up or down--it'll make this horrible clicking protestation, since it actually has a motor inside that'll tilt it to the correct angle automatically. You can actually break it by trying to forcibly point it up and down, so just leave it alone, you monster. And don't put it in a cabinet, like the one your TV might sit on: The sensor needs room to breathe and move about and it should not be confined inside tight spaces.
One last rule: Do not place the sensor on top of a speaker. That's mostly aimed at those of you with center speakers, but be careful about the location of your TV's speakers as well, if you're using those. More about that in the "Audio" section below. Nearby speakers can screw up the Kinect's audio sensors, and vibrations can screw up its video sensors, which would remove the Kinect's reason for being and possibly its sense of identity. You don't want to be responsible for the self-loathing it would feel if that happened.

The Light

Again, Microsoft really came through here: The Kinect is remarkably flexible in terms of operability under various lighting conditions. That's not to say that there aren't things you can do to help it out a bit, of course. Your enemies in this case are natural light (as usual, am I right, nerds?) and halogen light. Try to avoid having either natural or halogen light on the players while in play, and obviously don't shine light directly onto the sensor itself.

Bad Light!: Like vampires and gamers, Kinect fears natural sunlight.  Microsoft
Kinect works best in dim, but not dark, conditions, with even lighting throughout. If you have big windows, shade them during the day, and don't light up your living room like a dentist's office at night. The reason to avoid utter darkness is simply for fun's sake--the Kinect will definitely recognize gestures in the dark, which is good for controlling movies. But dim lighting is the best compromise for the gleeful awkwardness of playing Kinect: You want to be able to see your fellow players, but you don't want harsh clinical light to make their every move even less flattering.

The Video

The video side of the home theater setup is much less important. The Kinect works best, in general, with a modern HDTV, simply because it's an Xbox 360 peripheral and was designed for one. The specifics--LCD vs. plasma, 60Hz vs. 120Hz, Samsung vs. Not Samsung--don't really matter any more than usual. Just remember that you'll be in a different viewing position: You'll probably be moving your couch backwards (if you can), and you'll also be standing rather than sitting, so your TV might seem smaller and lower. That's not to say you need a big honking TV, but if you're using one that's a bit small for your room in its pre-Kinect state, you might end up squinting a bit.

The Audio

Audio is a little trickier than video. The Kinect will force you to do what seems like an unnecessarily exhaustive audio setup when you first plug it in. But it is not unnecessary! The Kinect's voice recognition feature may end up being ultimately as useful as the video sensors, and it's important to get it right. The setup does a pretty good job of calibrating itself, but it's too polite to lecture you about your home theater setup. That's what I'm here for.

Kinect Microphone Calibration:  Microsoft
If you're using the speakers in your TV, stop. Don't do that anymore. Not only are they almost universally lousy, but they'll make your Kinect experience (not to mention your TV, movies, and music experiences) suffer. Go buy some kind of stereo. The Kinect works best with either a stereo (two-channel) or Dolby 5.1 surround sound setup. Don't let me pressure you into dropping an extra grand on audio equipment, but a decent used receiver and a couple of speakers, or even one of those home-theater-in-a-box setups frantically flogged on Black Friday, will do you very well here.
5.1 systems feature a center speaker that should be placed just about where the Kinect sensor should be placed. Do not place the sensor on top of the center speaker, even if it balances really nicely or matches perfectly. Having a sound source that close to the Kinect's four microphones will dramatically undermine its ability to separate human voices from other sounds, and thus make it much harder for the Kinect to understand you.
If you've decided to disobey my very clear directions to go buy a reasonable stereo and stop living like a caveman, note where your TV's speakers are and try to place the Kinect sensor away from them.

The Outfits

The optimal outfit for playing Kinect is a full-body, non-reflective leotard in a neutral color. (A scuba suit can work in a pinch.) But even though our bodies are all beautiful in their own way, they're mostly not, and there are perfectly suitable apparel alternatives that won't scar the retinas of other people in the room. Really, just try not to wear shapeless clothing--the Kinect sensor relies on being able to pick out limbs and joints, so don't wear a poncho or a cape or a garbage bag or anything else that obscures your shape.

Dress Nicely for Kinect:  Microsoft
The Kinect is also able to detect faces (which is both cool and creepy, but that's a point for another day), so don't wear anything that covers your face. If, on the other hand, you are a burglar who is breaking into a Best Buy to steal some stuff, and you want to try out the Kinect because maybe you've heard so many great things about it in such publications as PopSci, and you want to sneak into and out of said Best Buy undetected with your loot--well, without making judgments (is it wrong to steal a loaf of bread to feed your etcetera?) or assuming anything about the attire of curious technophile thieves, you both can and should wear a ski mask. Because if you don't and the Kinect recognizes your face and the police find you because of your oversight and there's a headline sometime next week reading "High-Tech Burglar Caught by Microsoft Kinect," I will definitely write about it, and I'm liable to make fun of you, which might damage your self-esteem or confidence in your illicit career choice or professional pride.
All that being said, normal clothing generally works fine.
Happy Kinecting!
Read more on Kinect placement!
Read more on Kinect lighting!

Free Xbox


Each year Microsoft offers free Xbox to Windows platform users. So buy Windows and get free Xbox with your purchase.

Monday, May 21, 2012

Kinect replacement



Just saw the LEAP which can be a replacement for Kinect. Seems the future is coming faster.
I guess it's even faster if you want to use it as a mouse. Like, imagine putting it on the ground while your hand are above. At least for scrolling and zooming, it's more ergonomic.


Read more HERE.

Friday, May 18, 2012

IF

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGY:  2.378

GameCycle


Just read an article about the new device and game "GameCycle" developed by Nintendo and Out-Front. It's about implementing the game and real physical activity specially designed for those who can not use their lower limb.

http://www.out-front.com/gamecycle_faq.php

The GameCycle simulates hand cycling, but with a twist: When you crank and steer the arm cranks, they serve as a controller for off-the-shelf Nintendo GameCube racing games. When you crank the handles forward, the speed of your cranking controls the speed of the game object (e.g., the speed of a car). To steer the object, you tilt the handles from side to side. If you slow your cranking, you slow the object. If you crank in reverse, the object moves in reverse. It's that simple.

Powering UP


The faculty just bought the book "Powering up: are computer games changing our lives?" which is written by Rebecca Mileham. At the first glance, it look very practical and gathered all the information needed to know in the field of Exergames. I just started to read it. Will write a comprehensive report when I finished it.

http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470723106.html