How to avoid restarting every time the player/user moves off screen?

[wagedu]

Hi, first of all: thank you very much!

After loads of different approaches (Synapse, OSCeleton) I'm hooked up
with your software.
1. because I can SEE the skeleton being tracked
2. because your OSC messages are so much better organized than
OSCeleton.

But now... I'm having a (huge) problem: in my project, different users
will stand in front of the camera, one at a time.
A user stands in front of the camera, starts being tracked, stuff
happens. When she/he's done, will leave the room.
A new user steps in.

But the current configuration of the software gives an error every
time a user leaves the stage, and FORCES me to restart the
application...
=
Lost: Player (User 1)
FAILURE: 'Player lost off screen, restart sotware' says 'Error!'
=

Please, is there any chance to avoid having to restart the application
(takes almost a minute) before being able to put a new Player/user in
front of the camera?

Thank you very much, really :)

[Alistair de Blacquiere-Clarkson]

Hi,

I am intending to work on this next week, my plan is to use a similar approach to Synapse so as to get zero install difficulties on Mac. Which platform are you on? I don't think it is too difficult to change the code to reverb to a calibrating state, there was a reason that I did it this way in the first place because calibration seemed flaky a second time round, but now the drivers are improved then a calibration free approach is better.

It will take a week or two to get this done, let me know which platform and I'll keep you up to date.

Cheers,
Alistair

[Yago De Quay]

Hi Alistair,

I've been lurking the mail exchanges to geometricmusicstudio and I can see that there has been a lot of improvement on your side :) I've been using synapse for a bit now, can you tell me the difference between your software and this one?

Warm Regards,

Yago

--

Yago de Quay

Digital Media Artist

www.yagodequay.com

+351 966 089 603

twitter.com/yagodequay

skype: yagoquay

facebook.com/yagoquay

[Alistair de Blacquiere-Clarkson]

Hi Yago,

Synapse has a really interesting way of getting round Mac install issues, and I am actually going to release a version that uses some of Synapse because that is so easy to install. Synapse is completely unconfigurable though and when it sends out OSC messages it seems not to send out exact joint positions, but instead sends out gestures (if I am wrong then point me in the right direction). OSCKinnection really compares with OSCeleton and gives you the position of two controllable orbs, joint positions and skeletal visualization. OSceleton only gives you joint positions and a rough viewer, but it offers rich commandline configuration.

My plan is as follows:

(a) as quickly as possible release a free version based on Synapse that communicates exact 3d joint positions in an OSCKinnection style, probably configurable by a config file. At the moment I have something without config file that communicates OSCeleton style parameters.

(b) release a Mac version on the app store for a dollor or so that uses a nice cocoa UI that lets you configure everything while the thing is running.

If you have looked at the Sketch Synth 3D program that can act as a target for OSCeleton and OSCKinnection then you will see that I have improved the target so that there is a zero configuration OSC to Midi converter out there that actually lets you play with the Kinect. 

Cheers,

Alistair

[Nathan Cornes]

Hi Alistair, thanks for the quick reply. And for OSCkinnection, of course :)

I'm running Snow Leopard 10.6.8 on my Mac.

Also, I'd like to share some more info with you, hoping it may help:

I was using Synapse, and now OSCkinnection, because you BOTH deliver easy to manipulate OSC messages, which allows me to get the skeleton joints into Flash. 

Yes, Synapse sends joints positions x, y, z BUT it needs keepalives (or stops sending the info) and it also needs the Psi pose.

It is achieved using a few bridges: Synapse -> OSCulator -> NETLab toolkit -> Flash. 

Before Christmas, I was sharing that info with the developers of each of these softwares, and aside from Ryan (Synapse), the other two (Camille and Philip) were so kind as to change their softwares to better fit what I was building ;)

Now, OSCulator can accept up to 128 variables, and the NETLab widgets (in Flash) can read an OSC message as an array, instead of using a single widget for each variable.

I was able to adapt my OSCulator setup to work with OSCkinnection in less than 10'. So PLEASE, keep your messages structure and AVOID OSCeleton's one!!

The setup is as follows:

- OSCkinnection runs

- OSCulator listens on port 10000. It converts each message to a variable (skelly/head/X -> var0, skelly/head/Y -> var1 ... skelly/tors/Z -> var44) and then, when any activity is detected on telekinesis/orbred/Z -> REROUTE /skeleton/var0, var1 ... var44 to port 2202. I chose an "unused" message from OSCkinnection 'cos it's clearer for me.

- NETLab Hub runs in the background

- The NETLab AnalogIn widget is inside my flash file. It listens to port 2202 and reads the array values for "skeleton" (variables 0 to 44). Then, in AS3 I split them back into x, y, z values for each joint (a MC) and set its x and y position, as well as its scale (representing the z value)

You can read a detailed explanation of this process on http//:nathancornes.wordpress.com

But my article there is out of date. I wrote it when OSCulator accepted only a few variables and the NETLab widgets a single one per widget.

So, besides that, I'm attaching the OSCulator file I used with OSCkinnection, as well as the Fla file (with NETLab's widget included). You'd still need to download OSCulator and NETLAb toolkit. And remember: it only works on Flash CS5.5 (but Philip promised he'd adapt the widget to CS4)

===

After all that looong speech :) I hope it may be of some help to you, as well as your software is really helping me. Aside form the arbitrary delays in calibration, hehe

But, PLEASE, keep your OSC messages structure as SEPARATED messages. I insist that OSCulator "logic" is... well, not that much logic.

Thanks again, and best luck!

  Nathan Cornes

(+55.11) 8302.1164

[Alistair Clarkson]

I'll take a look in a sec, that finalises things though, that there should be no API break for OSCKinnection. I have OSCulator already so I can have a play with that. Hopefully I should be able to get the latest libraries into the next version so you won't have to worry about calibration anymore, it'll just grab whoever it sees first, if it loses them it will release the user, and then hopefully catch them again without having to reset. Looks like you are on the Mac if you are using OSculator so that should be fine.

---

From: Nathan Cornes <wag...@gmail.com>
To: geometricm...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thursday, 2 February 2012, 13:13
Subject: Re: How to avoid restarting every time the player/user moves off screen?

[AdbC]

To keep people in the loop, I am working on this at the moment, I have a zero install hassle client now, I just need to strap a cocoa UI onto it so that you can configure it while it runs.

[AdbC]

oh, and it doesn't restart every time you recalibrate