Ghost in the Shell Kinect

POSTED BY DANNY CHOO On Mon 2011/04/18 11:50 JST in Japanese Pop Culture

Have you ever fancied diving into the cyberspace in Ghost in the Shell "Solid State Complex" series? Well now you can thanks to some Microsoft Kinect technology attached to an Apple Mac Mini ^^;

A developer called Makoto Hara at dev company Kayac decided one day that he wanted to be in cyberspace. He got hold of the Microsoft Kinect and after attaching it to a Mac, his team then went and wrote this GITS SAC Cyberspace program. Took them about 2 months which included research while working with Production IG on visuals.

The setup can be experienced at the Parco in Shibuya (the one opposite the Apple store). Anybody can go along and try it out for free. Its been up n running for a while but the last day is tomorrow ^^;

Video below will give you a better idea of the game experience.

Parco are also having a Ghost in the Shell Solid State Society shop for a limited period until the May 8th which is filled with merchandise and artwork.

Time to take my first dive into cyberspace. Standing in the dont-shoot-me-please-no-please position enables the system to recognize your body which will let you control the game. The Kinect is in the top middle corner. For folks who are not familiar, Kinect is a device originally developed for the XBOX that recognizes human moment which is used to control whatever in the game.

Once in the dont-shoot-me-please-no-please position, the system only takes a few seconds to recognize your bits n pieces.

The aim of the game is to catch Tachikoma which runs around cyberspace. Some cyberspace and tachikoma action from the original series below.

First time playing with Kinect and was most impressed at the response. I did expect a certain degree or lag or failure to read my body motions but it was spot on which provided a smooth and pleasant gaming experience. Maybe time to get an XBOX if they decide to release a Kinect version of Street Fighter ^^;

You can shift your body left/right, lean back/forwards or step back/forwards to control your floating direction/speed in cyberspace. When Tachikoma comes into view, you would just try to grab it with your arm (or any other part of your body that has fingers/tentacles) which would shoot out some coolsome rings.

A most interesting gaming experience! Would be interesting if the playing area was on some sort of rocker to make the player feel more like they are floating.

Time to watch some other folks in action.

The Kinect is attached to a Mac Mini behind the screen. That Mac Mini then sends a signal (cant remember if WiFi or Bluetooth) to another Mac Mini thats inside the left box that you can see in the photo. That Mac Mini has two projectors connected which are in the left and right box.

"Connection is cutting" is the cooler way of saying "Disconnecting."

A reader comes all the way from Nakano after I tweeted for a small meetup.

The graphics are really nice. Code base is C ++.

Time to have a look around the rest of the shop.

Some stills from the SAC series.

Nice vacuum T-shirt packaging.

Motoko has very nice eyes.

The GITS SAC 3D movie is out in theaters across Japan now. Got a peek at the production when we were filming at the Production IG offices but had to keep schtum or our heads would have been cut off ^^;