[radicade] wanted to know what real life portals would look like; not something out of a game, but actual blue and orange portals on his living room wall. Short of building a portal gun, the only option available to [radicade] was simulating a pair of portals with a Kinect and a projector.
One of the more interesting properties of portals is the ability to see through to the other side – you can look through the blue portal and see the world from the orange portal’s vantage point. [radicade] simulated the perspective of a portal using the head-tracking capabilities of a Kinect.
The Kinect grabs the depth map of a room, and calculates what peering through a portal would look like. This virtual scene is projected onto a wall behind the Kinect, creating the illusion of real-life orange and blue portals.
We’ve seen this kind of pseudo-3D, head tracking display before (1, 2), so it’s no surprise the 3D illusion of portals would carry over to a projected 3D display. You can check out [radicade]‘s portal demo video after the break.
[via: http://www.hackaday.com]