Siemens / The Crystal Interactive Exhibits

AllofUs were asked to develop several of the interactive exhibits for The Crystal, a centre dedicated to improving our knowledge of urban sustainability. I developed one of the interactives, What's The Problem, a kinect driven experience that aims to teach users about the challenges of balancing supply and demand when dealing with renewable energy sources. The game was developed for Windows machines and uses the official Kinect SDK to leverage skeleton tracking without the need for any user calibration. Each 'mode' requires the user to generate the right amount of energy by physically simulating different energy sources such as wind and solar. Custom algorithms are used to track the movement of certain body parts in order to determine how much energy is being generated.

The interactive consists of 4 terminals, each of which are networked in order to allow collaborative gameplay in a bonus round that gives users the chance to work together and trigger a tesla coil positioned in-between the 4 terminals.

The software was developed using openFrameworks and the ofxMSKinect addon.