The 3D scanning capabilities of the Kinect have been front row in terms of displaying its numerous real-world applications. Being able to fully scan a 3D model of practically anything and then importing it into a 3D modelling solution or gaming engine lends itself to so many DIY projects that are cheap and practical.

I just stumbled across a pretty cool free throwing basketball game that uses Unity with the ZigFu framework. It's good to see that people out in the wild are taking the ZigFu SDK out for a spin and coming up with some pretty creative projects.

I'm more than likely posting this one a little premature as I get the feeling this is mostly a PoC video demo of a work in progress. Either way, it's a great showcase in terms of what you can piece together using ZigFU and the Unity game engine.

Here's a short but sweet video demonstration of Mert Akbal's Avian Flight Simulator game build using Unity. Game mechanics are simple enough. Gesture with your arms in a flying motion in order to control the height at which the butterfly climbs. Angle your torso in different positions to change the flight path direction as you fly around.

If anything, it's a great work out for those flabby arms developed over the holiday season. Definitely a less embarrassing work out then the shake weight!

Not much to say here aside from the fact that you can do some really great work using a kinect with Unity. If anything this is just a showcase piece in terms of what you can achieve in Unity with a Kinect sensor. The fact that the model is able to pick up boxes makes it seem as if the Unity Kinect wrapper example Skeleton was used as a base model and was improved upon significantly.

This is the perfect solution for those of you that just want to get up and running without all the headaches of downloading each framework and driver library individually. The idea is to create a package bundle that installs OpenNI, PrimeSense NITE and Avin2's SensorKinect so you can start using your Kinect on your PC with the click of a button.