Pareidolia – Scribbling Something out of Random Lines


You may have experienced seeing things from something unrelated. like.. a human face-alike cloud in the sky. (Oops I can not give another example for a “such as”.)

This is called Pareidolia. “The tendency to perceive a specific, often meaningful image in a random or ambiguous visual pattern.” (- Definition on merriam-webster)

When I was young, I used to see human faces out of dense leaves on the tree. Actually I still can, but without a normal vision to see things far away clearly and I’m yet too busy to feel it.
It’s not something bad to me and I don’t feel suffering from it. Instead, I just feel interested of seeking out something from normal stuff.
(Being busy is bad.)

This video is also about Pareidolia without exception. I have prepared the included captured clips since 2015, but hadn’t made one compilation out of them until just now. Time to share!

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Mario Flagpole Scene Simulation on Toy-Con Garage


I tried to make a 2D game with Toy-Con garage and this is what I have come up with. Though it’s not a complete “game” experience. It’s fun to build something seems to be simple but with even “simpler” graphics nodes.

-It doesn’t feel easy. Especially with the simple editor, which doesn’t support multi-select on objects.. space is a bit limited.. and difficult to get one object selected when there’re several ones overlaying together…

But I kind of feel and understand it is mainly designed for simple-yet-fun graphics programming. Otherwise it doesn’t feel fun if users are not making complex enough projects. However you can try building one but take responsibility for your choice while it can be quite inconvenient. And anyway… it’s been quite good to have as something on a game console.

There’s something not covered to explain in the video. If you have a question, you can leave a comment below.

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Dreams In Sleep

I have intriguing dreams sometimes. I consider them as some random creative moments. I want to note down some of them here. Simply because they are interesting. 🙂

There may be terminologies for what I’m describing. If you know anything more about these or just have any ideas, free feel to leave a comment.

Half-sleeping..

More oftenly, dreams appear when I get tired, and am already on bed for sleep. My brain would somewhat still be rolling inside, it does not fully rest. I feel half-sleeping-and-half-awake.

The dream contents can be anything I’m not familiar with but yet new and impressive. I wouldn’t expect to see these good things I don’t work on daily, but it all comes to my brain.

Symphony

In the dream, I hear good symphony, with different musical instruments playing together. I can feel it sound good and professional. But I can’t tell what all musical instruments they were due to my lack of knowledge on symphony. Even now in reality I can’t tell or have some more understandings on real symphonies. There could be cello, organ, and something I don’t know.

I would wonder, was that really a good piece of melody or I just have had a lower standard on what a good piece of music is in dreams(the aesthetic judgment shuts off), and felt enjoyable for poor quality sounds.

I don’t have skills to create/arrange these sounds, how do they come?
Was I somehow casually creating them in the dream? Or was I repeating/rehearing some pieces of music I heard before, which were unexpectedly stored in my memories?

Potentially a new song

This is similar to hearing symphony. It’s more lyrical style with singing voice(s), like hearing a pop song.

I could feel a bit of regret sometimes, as if I would’ve noted down the melody and make a new song if I’m a professional song writer. I’m not but I did dream about trying to wake up, take my phone, sing out and record what I still could remember.

Also, was that just a copy of an existing song or a new melody never heard with few similarities with other songs?

Nice visual content

This is like watching an artistic video, yet with impressive visuals. It’s random and unpredictable. I’m at the same time hoping/enjoying it to be just unpredictable. I cannot memorize and remake the visuals, but it was surely impressive.

Clear zooming-in vision

How do you feel about the image quality in a dream? Is it clear or blurred like in some film scenes?

I can see a really clear view in dreams sometimes. That is, I know I’m in a dream, seeing astonishing clear images just like in real life. And furthermore, the content zooms in and still looks clear. Like watching an infinitely zooming image with always clear pixels, for 1 second. (The zooming lasts for short and not like it’s going infinite.)

I guess.. You may not remember any images of a dream, but it doesn’t mean you saw blurred things.

When in these content generating dreams, I’m in the mood of ① getting unpredictable good quality of art works from nowhere, ② enjoying, ③ hoping to enjoy more and get surprised.

Gotten-up illusion

For many times when I tried to wake up in a sleep, whether because I hear the alarm, or for any reasons I intent to get up.

I may had the illusion that I was getting up – and stopping the alarm eventually. Then after a moment, I heard the alarm again, realizing the getting up process was in a dream and I was still in bed.

This can happen for a few times – a few rounds of thinking I have gotten up but I’m not, till I really wake up.

So I don’t regard them as good or bad things though medically or psychologically there can be different signs. If you know anything related, feel free to let me know and possibly help me dig into it.

Posted in Life | 2 Comments

MIDI Reality – Mixed Reality with Kinect and MIDI Keyboard


Tech & music are my favorites. I’d love to do them together.
So I had this idea to try covering a song with a MIDI keyboard, and a Kinect v2 sensor for mixed-reality floating caption effects.
That was when the song (Life Is Worth Living by Justin Bieber) was still new. However, the recording process’s been so procrastinated.
Since it had taken for a very long time, I decided to not making a better cover, but this somewhat bad, weird and incomplete one. And, explaining how that was done more focusedly.

You can consider it as how most mixed reality / augmented reality effects are possibly done behind nowadays. Literally overlaying parts of(or full) virtuality on a reality layer.

Furtherly, using regular AR marker technology to track position of MIDI keyboard, Kinect can capture around for a movable camera view(Requires a stored 3D background data also). Or just use HoloLens!

Posted in Augmented Reality, Kinect, Mixed Reality, Tech | 2 Comments

Flying Skull VR

This is my first work on non-cardboard VR device. I won an Oculus DK2 for an online hackathon several months ago. But hadn’t tried building something with it, till I asked myself, “what kind of interesting thing can I do with my DK2? Not just looking around, or other things’ been done by others.”

Then I came up with this idea, to make something I can feel the real and dynamic touches while interacting with the virtual world.

There can also be more possibilities, such as:
The skull shoots fireballs toward you and you need to evade them.
Add emotions on skull. (e.g. Getting angrier after being punched.)

Posted in Kinect, Leap Motion, Tech, Virtual Reality | 9 Comments

Minecraft in Real Life using Kinect v2



Hey guys, I just developed this Kinect v2 application a few days ago. It lets you be the Steve and interact with Minecraft stuff.

And, you can get it for free! For more information, please check out this Production Page.

Posted in Kinect, Tech | 2 Comments

Kinect体感互动开发学习资源

下面我列举一些供体感互动开发者学习的资源网站:

  • yangecnu的博客
    Kinect 1代,很详细,即便要学Kinect v2,也可以从1代的教程受益不少。
  • Kinect 2 Hands On Labs (英文)
    Kinect二代的上手开发教程。
  • Vangos Pterneas的博客 (英文)
    很感激Vangos Pterneas!以前买Xbox 360 + Kinect一代,就是想尝试能不能自己开发,不能就当游戏机玩了。
    结果网上搜到寥寥无几的开发资料,其中就是他的文章,是他公布的示例代码把我带入体感开发这个领域。
  • 小明编程
    不止Kinect的学习资源/新闻,也包括Leap Motion,Myo等相关体感信息。
  • YuYuYouEr工作室
    Kinect v1/v2的Unity插件哪家强?绝对YuYuYouEr!
    YuYuYouEr Kinect SDK Wrapper v2.0插件可切换Kinect 1/2代使用,无需更换代码,免费!
    通过其插件写的Unity程序,打开时右下角有一弹窗,很快就消失。

暂时就列举这几个..如果大家有什么好的建议也可以评论,再添加上去。

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New Product: Apple Watch Game [Watch And Shoot]

Hey guys, I’ve developed an iPhone game that you can (only) play with your Apple Watch.
It’s called Watch And Shoot.

Here’s the video:

It would be my new product so it’s added to the product menu.
For details, check out the product page.

Posted in Apple Watch, Tech, Virtual Reality | Leave a comment

Virtual Violin with iPhone and Apple Watch


My first work on Apple Watch:-D, done with the WatchKit for WatchOS 2.

Posted in Apple Watch, Tech | Leave a comment

Kinect v2 Mouse Control w/ Source Code

A mouse control application for Kinect v2, including a couple of options for various uses.

Kinect v2 Mouse Control Form Screenshot


I’m so glad that I’ve just become a Microsoft Kinect MVP since this July, so I think I need to do something more.

One request asked most since the original Kinect came out is, “can I use my hand to control the mouse cursor?” There you can find a few applications for doing this with original Kinect on the web.

These days, some people still asked me about this kind of application for Kinect v2. Then I strangely found there’s no such downloadable applications on the web. I gotta release a Kinect v2 version app. And here’s it, with source code!

I initially develop this for Francis Kim(He’s a Magento Developer). Thanks Francis for letting me release this freely!


Options:

  • Mouse Sensitivity
  • Pause-To-Click Time Required
  • The time you hold your hand for as a click

  • Pause Movement Thresold
  • How large the circle range you hold your hand inside for a little while would be a click

  • Cursor Smoothing
  • The large it is, the smoother the cursor would move, more slowly as well.

  • Grip Gesture
    Grip to drag/click
  • Pause To Click
    Hold your hand and don’t move for a little while to click.
  • No clicks, move cursor only

Github: KinectV2MouseControl
EXE files: [download id=”24″]


Posted in Kinect, Tech | 49 Comments