In the time since my last post, I've found that I've become somewhat used to a routine of working on a project only a little bit here and there each day, getting little to maybe nothing done each day. I'm surprised how used to working this slow I've gotten. I still want to dive in more so, but my slow work plan is working so far, so great!
Mentioned in my last post, I have been working on creating a custom window frame. I wasn't having much luck for awhile, getting stuck on early stages of this task. But I finally learned enough to start making more educated guesses about the problems I was facing, and I finally figured things out myself. From there it's been only mildly rocky. But for the most part things have gone smoothly to the point were I got all the basics of the idea implemented with the custom window titlebar and borders. In my development project for this code, things look and work almost exactly how I could want them to now. From here, it's just fine tuning things. Like getting rid of a bug or 2, and covering a few loose ends.
I'm not certain what I want to get working on next. Either custom drawing some client controls like I would want, outlining the Z-Net 3 design I have in my head into a resource editor, maybe IRC message encryption, or tinkering with how I might go about addon support.
The latter 2 because it would be a change of pace from what I have been working on. The design outline, just because I'm thinking it might be good to get the things out of my head at this stage, just so I can fine tune my ideas as I'm working other things. And the first, because I learned a lot with the title bar/frame stuff, and I should be able to apply what I learned to that.
But I have time to think about all that, as I still have some work left to do with my current task.
I'd post a pic of the work on my custom frame stuff, but all the work has been on the code. Not the imagery itself. For development I've been using Bitmaps from the skin files of some commercial skinning libraries. I don't think their would be any copyright issues with me just posting a pic of me using them outside of their intended libraries, but I'd rather not show it just so that the frame looking like that isn't expected. I don't want to mock up my own quick crummy bitmaps either. Sadly, this type of work only looks as good as the images I display with it. I may change my mind about this later.
I have begun working on Z-Net 3, but mainly just preliminary stuff. First on my list is what I expected to be the tougher challenge. I want Z-Net 3 to have a nice looking, stylish interface. None of the blandness of the zbattle style GUI. Not quite even the mIRC UI that ZN 1 and 2 had. It basically means I have to create my own skin, and before that I have to make the code support using such a skin. This means I have to use bitmaps everywhere. I've started with the frame and title bar. This part has been extremely tricky for me because it uses code and API functions that I have never had to use before, so it's all new to me. Making things more difficult is the fact that I can find zero help for doing this online. The closest topics I can find are about replacing the entire window with a simple bitmap skin, which isn't what I want and helps me very little. Such interfaces aren't resizeable. To make a resizeable interface you have to have at least 8 different bitmaps. The 4 corners, top, bottom, and both sides. I was quickly able to display the bitmaps as such, and tile or stretch them as needed when the window was resized. But I've been going in circles trying to basically get the parts of the bitmaps that I would want to be transparent and able to be clicked through to whats behind the window, to be as such. This is a necessary thing in order for the window to look attractive, else it will have to be a dull squared, 90 degree corner piece of garbage. Other programs do this, so mine should be able to as well. But for whatever reason, EVERYTHING I try fails, and there is just no help to be found yet.
Ideally, I wouldn't have to reinvent the wheel. You would think that on the net there are probably several libraries to choose from to do such a thing, that I could use in Z-Net 3, or at least use to learn my mistakes. But nope. Everything is a "pay me some ridiculous amount of money", un-freeware-friendly, piece of crap. Ive tried a few things. All in the form of a binary dll, pretty much. Some look great and do exactly what I would want, some not so much. So far only one has any hope, being USkin.dll. For a short time the company that made it offered a free version. Its not optimal. So far it looks glitchy and flickery in its demos. But atm, free is free, and maybe I can add some code to negate that stuff. But so far that doesn't want to work either, even when compiled with a simple stock demo project. The program crashes after I run it, and atm I'm unsure why.
My hope and plan for now is to just try and get USkin working, and move on for now. Ideally down the line I would hope I would figure out the issues with my own code and use that instead. But right now I'm eager to stop spinning my wheels and move on to something else. A lot of what will be in ZN3's code will be easy. Things I've done before with ZNI. So I'm less concerned with certain things, and more concerned with things such as protocol encryption, self updating software, addon support, etc. Things I haven't done much before, if at all.
If all goes well with the interface, I'll need to be looking for a artist to help design the UI. I could probably do it myself, but I'd rather not. I'm sure my UI would look good, but I'm not an artist, so it likely wouldn't look as good as it could. Once this project really gets rolling, I'll probably look for a website guy as well. It might be nice to have some team members for a change, outside of mods. But that's for a future day.
... and I caved in, and brought Z-Net I back. Yes, you read that correctly! Z-Net I is now back online. But there has been a big change made for me to do so. You can read more about it on the Z-Net website.
There's still some polish left to be done, but it could now be considered as being finished. Well, I'm not sure I consider it finished yet because I know of several things left I would like to add or do better. At the very least though, it's now kind of screen shot worthy. But as I've mentioned before, don't expect much.
This first screenshot shows the tab for configuring all the basic settings for the client. It's not a pretty layout. I hate organizing controls in a dialog like this, because you add one thing, and everything gets messed up. Pay no attention to the button at the bottom. That's just a shortcut I added to open the settings ini file, for convenience. All the controls work as expected. Some disable/enable at connect/disconnect. The Nick Name box will send the /NICK command when the name in it is different and you press enter while connected.
This second screenshot shows what a chatroom window looks like, complete with a few demo lines. Also seen is the use of colors, both for text and the background of the controls. The url link seen at the top is underlined, because it does infact work and open up your browser just by clicking on it.
Whats not seen is Right Click context menus. One pops up when clicking the name of a tab, allowing you to select to close that tab. One shows when clicking the chat buffer to copy any selected text to the clipboard. And another shows when clicking the nick name list, showing a short list of basic IRC options you might expect from doing so. The Send button is disabled only because there is no text being typed. The server window and PM windows aren't shown, but they look exactly like the shown chat window, except without a nick list.
Yea. Nothing extraordinary. But it IS an IRC client. And should serve well as a base for a project like Z-Net 3.
What I have left to do on it is. I'd like to add code for allowing the window to be resized. And thus resizing the controls appropriately. The auto reconnect code still has issues. I'd like to comb through the code and comment more things. A few bits of code could stand to be refined. Also, unlike most IRC clients, this doesn't support DCC transfers yet. I'm uncertain if/when I want to work on that any time soon. I'd want it for Z-Net 3, I'm just not sure I consider it a basic IRC client feature, or that I feel like the hassle of going through adding it. Doing so is an entire sub project.
As far as releasing this. Well, in this form, it's grown beyond what I'd want to release as the commercial project I've mentioned. I could make the program simpler to use, and it could stand to see attention given to it to make it look more appealing. So if I go with that plan, I would likely copy the code to a new project and start peeling it back.
Now that this is shown, keep in mind that Z-Net 3 will likely not look anything like this. I have a different layout in mind for that. With this IRC client now at this stage, I may soon start working on the GUI for Z-Net 3. But due to WoW, lately I've been having a hard time getting as much done with programming as I would want. You can even see I used WoW running as a background in the screenshots. If I do start working on it soon, it may be awhile before I try porting the IRC client code into it as like I mentioned, I still have more I want to refine with it.
Sadly. Since to few users actually read the website, I figure I should post about this here too. Today after much personal turmoil, I decided it shut down Z-Net I. For good. None of the only if mods are online stuff.
The decision on this comes in part from several things. It was a nightmare to moderate. To few users acted even remotely respectable on it. To few users cared to see it thrive. People originally cheating the poll, faking more interest in the project then there was. My inability to distance myself from the project while knowing people would be misusing and abusing the program I put all my hard work into. Fact that it was attracting the wrong type of users than what I wanted. No community was, or even could start to thrive with it. The fact that it was making me come across as an asshole or tyrant. And well, everything about the project lost all it's fun for me.
I gave people every opportunity I could to see it stick around, but few if any took that opportunity. I've just gotten to the point where I want the project firmly in my past, so I can move forward, and do so with a happy enthusiasm. I hoped to have this program around until the day I might release Z-Net 3, but as it turned out, that just could not happen. I don't like the idea of leaving the few good users high and dry with no place to play, and an uncertainty if I will create the all around better project I would want. But it just can't be helped. And to those users. I'm sorry.
Don't put any faith, or much hope in it. But I suppose it could come back if enough people applied to be mods. But I tried that before though. Coaxing users into applying with the possibility of closing down the project looming overhead. The apps fell way short of what was needed, and 1 to none of those even worked out.
I've considered keeping it around for a small "invite only" community of users. But I just don't see that working out to well. And managing who and who is not part of that community would be to much trouble.
So for the people who might stick around the Z-Net community, you have Z-Net 3 to look forward to. But as stated elsewhere. There's not going to be a rush on it. It's important that I do better job on it then I've ever done with a project. And to do so, it should take time.
My ideas for it are starting to get more fixed, which I suppose is progress. But I haven't really worked on any of it yet. Just the IRC client I've been making to help be a backbone of such projects. That project however is coming along well still. And while its not the most impressive IRC client, it's way more solid then Z-Net I. It's at a point where I'm finding little left to do on it, outside of cosmetic things, or the few annoying bits I've been putting off as long as possible.
If I do release that IRC client, it would be with the goal as being IRC made as simple as possible, and being the most newb friendly client. I've recently tried many many IRC clients, and several claim to be the true newb clients. But honestly, none are. IRC can be made more newb friendly then that. Does it need to be? I'm not sure. But it can, and my client would have to have some gimmick or reason to be used instead of others.
I'd want to post a screenshot of it, but it's kind of cosmetically ugly atm. Hopefully I can take care of that issue soon.
Anyway. To those who won't stick around this blog of the Z-Net website now. Goodbye, and good luck!
As I mentioned in my last post, I've been working on a IRC client for the purpose of writing better IRC code to use with my projects, rather than the old dirty code I used in the past. There's plenty of IRC clients out there to choose from, and I by no means think all of them are lacking and I could bring something better. I'm just writing a IRC client purely because without doing so, it would be hard to write the code I want properly, when it comes to it having everything I need for my projects.
But with that said, when I feel I'm done with it, I'm not sure yet on what I would plan to do with it. I certainly won't keep it to myself as yet another unreleased project. But it has been such a great learning experience, I'm considering extending that experience even further. What's on my mind is, that since I'm so far so happy with the code, I'm considering releasing it commercially just for the experience of doing so. Not for any extraordinary price, or even a moderate one. Probably $1-$5 at the most. Just enough to get to delve into new areas with releasing programs. Learn a little bit about selling a piece of software, both in advertizement and income, and programmaticly with trials and registration keys. It's stuff I've wondered about here and there, but just dismissed because I felt it's to far above my head. Which anymore is not how I like thinking. I'm trying to take my development skills to the next level, and this is a new level itself.
Now for those who may find concern with these thoughts regarding my other projects like the Z-Net's. Regardless of the outcome of what I do with this IRC client, those projects will remain just as free as they always have been. That said though, of course I would hope the experience would go well, and lead me into releasing something else more serious, commercially.
Still, it's not like I made up my mind on releasing the IRC client like that yet. I may deem it to big of a headache, or scrap the idea for some other reason. If I do lean that direction, I'll just release it here like my other projects.
Now on to my progress with it.
It's starting to resemble a real IRC client now. Despite me trying to take it slow, it's progressing quite fast. I'm going out of my comfort zone to learn new things, and there have been some days where I was stuck on various things all day. But unlike years ago when I was still learning the basics, my skill and experience is now enough to know when persevering through difficulty on something will work out. Often times it's a difficult balance trying to remain interested when you're unable to make progress, and you can't find any useful help. But lately I've learned a lot even in those such situations.
Right now my IRC client connects to a server, like any should. Remains stable through any activity. Has a decent framework setup for all of the basic aspects of such a program. No more godzilla sized functions, and code that is now a lot more thoroughly thought out and refined before moving on. It supports chat rooms and private messages having their own windows, by way of tabs. I added colored text support that's even more refined than ZNI or EQCLP. Users using colored text complies with the same standard mIRC uses, so you would see such colored text just as intended, including text background color. I have events for most of the non-numeric IRC messages in, and a few of the numerics themselves. I now have the nicklists fully working. And it auto join's a list of channels that users supply.
Mostly what I have to do now, other then to refine my code as I think about it, is get the connect retry code working properly, because it's buggy. Saved settings, probably through an ini file. Beyond that, mostly just minor stuff, and adding more unique event responses to all the message types. My goal for it is to just be a basic IRC client, but I'm unsure as of yet on what aspects I consider basic.
It's not going to wow anyone, since it's just a basic IRC client, but hopefully soon I'll post a couple screen shots or a video.
With it going so well, I need to think more about the Z-Net 3/Z-Band projects, as soon I may have little in my way preventing me from moving forward on one of them. I should probably narrow some of my choices down to some polls. But after the way my last poll went, I don't know if I could trust the results. But such a thing may not go to well simply because both projects would appeal to people who don't come to my blog. So the results would be off.
I went into it more on the Z-Net website, but as I announced there I am dropping the Z-Net I project. Reasons aside, what this means is that the plans I had before to start upgrading ZNI past a clone of zbattle once I felt I got all the issues fixed, are now scrapped. I no longer have plans to do so. And as far as fixing issues with it as is goes, well I might do so here and there, but don't count on it. Also what this means is I won't be moderating it anymore myself. There will still be mods, and I will still take applications for more mods, I just won't be handling it myself. Keep in mind though that the rules are still present, even if your not warned or banned as quickly as before. I worked overboard before to help try to establish in users minds that there are in fact rules to follow for proper conduct when using the program, and that overworking went on far to long, eventually taking its toll on me. The project simply stopped being fun, and just became about babysitting a bunch of idiots.
Moving on now. I did enjoy coding at times on that project, but it was hard to do so with the limits I had to place on myself in order to help get the program to be as good of a quality as I could get it. Coding fun for me comes from doing new stuff with code that I've never done before. Not combing over my code over and over again trying to crack bugs and issues. Both major times I worked on that project, I was rushing through it, as it were. Back in 2010 it was because I was challenging myself to do it in 7 days, and earlier this year it was because users had lost zbattle and needed somewhere else to go as soon as they could get it. So I didn't really allow myself much time to catch issues as I was designing it or just write something more properly before the code was out of hand and in need of a rewrite. To its credit, the ZNI code works shockingly well, for what feels like code held together Scotch tape and bubble gum.
Now though, I've decided to move onto a new project. One I can take my time with. One I can actually try and improve my skill with by not taking a short cut when I know a professional would do it another way. The new projects goal is as of yet still undecided. It's either going to be a true Z-Net 3, which mostly means support for emus other than just ZSNES and a Game Room list that's a lot less of a moderation nightmare than the zbattle style. Or it's going to be Z-Band, hopefully with a different GUI and overall design than ZNI. While it would probably be to much of a task, it could also be a combo of both. Managing Z-Band compatibility and writing server code with just ZSNES in mind would be enough work as is. Doing so with other emus and popular games for them would just be crazy.
Right now though I'm just going back to basics. Lately I've been working on new IRC code. The IRC code I use in ZNI was ported over from the EQC Launchpad project, and even there it was ported over from a very simple MS-DOS console based IRC client I wrote back when I was just trying to get the gist of how to even go about writing such a thing. It wasn't a very well done program or anything, by any means. It just more or less got the job done well enough. The new IRC code I'm working on I'm writing almost all from scratch, using what I learned from the old code I used in those 3 projects, and every part is being done in a more stable well thought out manner. I'm writing the code along with a basic IRC client as I feel I have to, to understand exactly how I want it to be used so I can refine it more as I go. There would likely be little reason to want it, but I may release a binary for the thing once I feel it's done. I don't plan to go open source with it, but I'm happy now knowing I could if I wanted to. I would never do so with ZNI, that's how ugly the code is. Still though I guess that doesn't exclude making my next project a team project if I desired it, as the ZNI code has also made me unwilling to do that. But even then that may not be enough. When other people start doing the work, that means less fun for me. And of course I've had bad experiences with team projects over the net. Well, I'm not going to make up my mind on that stuff now, and instead I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.
Other than the IRC code, I was bored one night and made a mock up program for theoretical new GUI elements for a new Z-Net/Z-Band client. It's nice to see that I can do some of the things with the GUI that I would have wanted to do with ZNI. The mock up is in no way worth showing a picture of though, as I'm really leaving myself open on design ideas as long as I can. It could end up as a tricky balance between retaining the ease of use of the zbattle style GUI as much as possible, but also making something more modern or trying to innovate in some ways. I don't want to fall into making a mIRC clone either.
Ideally the program would look and function so well, it would feel like you can't believe such a thing wasn't made years ago. Like how did we ever get by without it? lol. Or maybe it's so simple, it seems genius! haha. I know, that's a bit of a stretch. But the higher I aim, the better the result! Hopefully... Even if I don't expect that much.
I've released the new, and final version of Z-Net I.
Along with this new version, I've removed the recent ban of the Brazilian IP addresses, and should soon remove the restriction of requiring a mod to be online for the server to be online.
To learn more, follow the link below to the Z-Net news page.
I've recently been working on Z-Net a lot. Ever since I had to instate the requirement for a mod to be around for the server to be online I've been working to add various, sometimes minor changes or improvements with regards to how it effects moderating. Doing just that got me interested enough in the program again to find and fix other minor issues while I waited for feedback about the major bugs.
I haven't wanted to release a new version unless it contained a bug fix for the major bugs, and sadly with the player base being largely Brazilian, feedback just wasn't good if even given at all. Thankfully though, with the help of a couple users (Tallgeese and JacerX) I was finally given some info to get me started on the most major remaining issue, and I now think there's a good chance I've fixed it!
The timing is probably good, as I also didn't want to get the program promoted that much until it was more stable. And thanks to the end of summer and the recent ban of several major Brazilian IP ranges, that user count has got pretty low.
I've never been good at promotion. And as Ive said before, this project was for the community and meant to be maintained by the community, not me. But I'm probably going to make an attempt at promotion soon. I have no idea what I'm going to do differently then anything I've tried in the past though.
The latest version is now in private beta testing, and hopefully won't stay in that phase to long. The new version, once public, will still be a public beta as I'm sure the limited private beta tester pool it has won't catch all the issues. If all works well with this once its public, the next major version will be the 1.0 release. Past the 1.0 release, new features and major changes could start being added.
I didn't plan to write another follow up on the subject, but I've now recently watched the Oculus Rift KickStarter project end at almost 10 times its funding goals, and feel the significance of that warrants mentioning. It shows the demand for this type of hardware that until now we have had nothing concrete to raise our voice in support of.
Now, looking to the future with advancements in projects like the Oculus Rift and the Euclideon Unlimited Detail engine, what can we expect next? And when?
The Oculus Rift previously seemed to have been indicated for a early 2013 release of a consumer model, and with a higher res display. But in reading recent interviews and Q&As it now seems like it's slated for a Q3-Q4 2013 release. It's sad to have to wait longer for this dream hardware, but there's probably no helping it. After wading through pointless question after pointless question, or the same questions getting asked several times, finally there has been some light shed on the question of how much the consumer version will cost. But that light is kind of dim. I'm sure it has been assumed by many like me that the $300 price tag of the KickStarter dev units was going to be the price for the consumer project as well. But as far as the team behind it indicates, that price does not reflect the price of the consumer model. This could mean it would be cheaper, but it's far more likely going the other way. They're generating hype with a lower price, and will probably jack it up on us just assuming we won't mind. Now the consumer model will have better hardware inside of it, seemingly warranting a bigger price. But that would be approaching the situation with HMD's wrong. The problem with HMD tech until now was it being outside of the consumer price range for anything decent. Anything higher then $300 for this thing will keep it marketed for a very slim crowd. Not all of us like paying more then that for our gadgets. Just hardcore computer geeks with no girlfriends/wives spending money on things like unnecessary video cards and CPU's, maybe family's on a TV that several people can enjoy at once, and a few idiots with smart phones. $300 for this type of gadget is the most reasonable price, and what HMD's really need. Great effort should be made to make sure the consumer model goes no higher to make sure it's as successful and popular as it could be.
But realistically, I think they will try selling it for around $400-$500 based on the higher resolution display. And it's already been stated they are not going to make different models for different price ranges/resolutions. So we won't have any tiered options to look forward to. The feedback from people who have used this has been strong (and in no way seems like filtered praise or people getting paid to say positive things). But that can only go so far. The truth is, this tech doesn't show very well in pics and videos. So it has a huge marketing hurdle to try and convince people that $400-$500 for something completely unseen before by most people, and something that video/picture does not do justice, is worth it.
So it will ether come out around this time next year with a $400-$500 price tag, far less fanfare then it deserves, with higher resolution screens, and be basically only purchased by a smaller fraction of the users who would be interested. Or it will be bumped up to $350 with its current screens, and draw more attention than it would have otherwise and probably everyone will have at least a friend of a friend with one. I tacked on an extra $50 just because I think they will that. They claim they're barely breaking even on the dev units right now.
Well, with Euclideons Unlimited Detail engine, its been over a year now, and still nothing. Well, almost nothing. They recently finally added content to their website. But to every gamers surprise, they make no mention of video games at all. Anywhere. Their entire site seems to be about some geological mapping BS that 99% of their fans and critics alike, couldn't care less about. It would seem like they decided to screw over gamers and refocus the tech just for that. But I don't think it's the case. There are reports that they're just branching out the engine into other fields as they add the staff to do so. The engine as it exist now lacks things needed for gaming, like anything related to motion of the graphics. At this stage the engine is better suited for something like this geological stuff that doesn't need motion. So it makes sense for a eager new company to be wanting to put their tech into use in anyway, as early as possible and possibly start earning money as such.
So with that said, why the silence still on the gaming front? Well, besides their arrogant power position of dangling the carrot on a stick for us, and them honestly having no obligation to supply us with any info. They're probably gearing up for something significant to show from the techs advancement in the past year. Most likely it's either a new, and downloadable demo like we were sort of promised for this year, or motion support. Other but unlikely candidates are higher frame rates, something about their "compaction" methods, better shadowing or who knows. I'll stick to talking about the main 2 possibility's.
With a downloadable demo, it's risky. There are tons of talented hackers out there ready to rip apart their code just to see how it's done, I'm sure. Maybe they don't care though. Assuming they don't, what might we see? Well, I doubt that with all the new staff they acquired that they got a new, real artist. So we would likely see a rehash of the same old island demo we've seen before. What would be amazing of them is to release something that demonstrates the ease of converting polygon models into their atom models. Preferably being able to do a whole scene. Let the real, amateur artists showcase their techs abilities for them in YouTube videos or downloadable files to run on it. I doubt that would happen though, as much as it would be nice.
The more likely update I would expect is a video showing some motion. Motion at the least from scenery. But we could see some crude scripted animation from some lifeless dull character walking around on their unmoving island demo. Probably relying on the practiced line that they're just programmers, not animators. I'm being a bit negative I suppose, but while I think the company is legit, I just don't trust them much to show much of anything off. Watching/reading the interviews with their project head, I'm just left with the feeling that they're enjoying the backlash to much, almost like trolls themselves, purposely trying to instigate people into hating them. The "any sort of a attention is good attention" type of stuff. When they have the spotlight on them they're going to milk it in any way they can.
So to sum up my speculation:
Oculus Rift - Q4 2013, $400-$500, 1 step up in resolution from the dev build.
Unlimited Detail Engine - Crummy video in the next 2 months, showing either basic scenery animation or crude character animation.
Worth mentioning in this follow up is another piece of new hardware being developed. I haven't looked into it as extensively as the other projects, but it does seem interesting and worth mentioning. It's called LeapMotion.
I know. Sounds like a stupid name. I don't understand it either. Anyway, what this hardware is, is a replacement for things like a mouse, keyboard, and gamepad. It's a type of camera that tracks the details of your hands and fingers at very fast speeds and at very fine precision. Along side the Oculus Rift, this really makes you feel like that future that movies have always made it seem like we were heading for, is finally near.
There are a few videos demoing this on YouTube, but others don't really showcase much different. And the only gaming it's shown with is cheap trendy type stuff. Not real video games. So who knows how hard they are working on adapting this for gaming or anything outside of useless novelty stuff that doesn't do much beyond what you could do with a mouse.
Personally, I don't think this tech is to near ready. The fact that it needs to be below your monitor to track movement above it rather then the other way around (maybe it supports both, I haven't read about it though.) and its limited field of tracking make its use kind of limited. I don't think it needs to be some sort of gimmicky Kinect BS, tracking entire body movement, just a larger area then the couple feet in front of your monitor.
If this tech can evolve more and more as time goes by, it can show real promise though. It could move on to maybe 2-3 sensors allowing 360 degree full body tracking, maybe see some facial detail tracking, or who knows. Such things could really allow for some amazing new control interfacing for standard computer use, and go well beyond the capabilities of current motion detection game interfaces.
But thinking about this, if the drivers and software that go along with it are as good as could be hoped, controls could be amazing if you could use hand gestures, like sign language or some sort of spell casting. The range of such gestures is enormous, and could be used as shortcuts for a lot of basic computer actions or gaming controls.
I could theorize its capabilities all day long, but won't. This is defiantly another piece of tech to keep our eyes on though, and see what evolves with it.
