My Idea for Microsoft Kinect - A Virtual World Just Like Lawnmower Man

Remember the film Lawnmower Man where the guy went into a virtual world? See the bottom of this post for the trailer. Well maybe Microsoft Kinect could fetch something like this to the masses.

I've been having a think about the sort of games that could work well with this technology and when you think about how it can recognise you and your voice, understands depth, motion and your mood etc. then why not create a virtual world.

Everthing I have seen up to now has involved everyone jumping up and down infront of the TV. But what if you put on a set of TV glasses and the Kinect placed you in the center of the game? If you held your hand up infront of your face Kinect could show your hand right there infront of you via the screen! Freaky! :o)

Developers etc will obviously have to get to grips with the platform but wow this thing could be huge. You could interact with people/characters/other players on xbox live right there in the game all in a virtual world.

You could also use the platform to create your own 'self' in someone elses system over xbox live for video/face to face chat! This again will be amazing but freaky but I can see it happening.

And how about a good old punch up game where you actually have a ruck with your friends in this virtual world. I dont know the quality of the depth sensor to be able to make out facial features but with some image wizardry im sure a half decent image of a person coudl be overlayed onto the virtual person.

I do wonder about safety though if you start wearing glasses and wondering aroudn this virtual world. A shin into a non virtual coffee table wouldn't be too clever.

I've not got the new Kinect yet and think it will go on the xmas list. I was quite excited by the Natal videos several months ago but had forgotten about it really since. However after looking at it more today im quite looking forward to having a play and seeing just where this puppy goes! Looking at the messages on twitter and facebook it seems people are giving it the thumbs up!

I know one thing for sure anyway... it wont be difficult to lay your hands on a Wii this xmas! They will be ten a penny on fleabay!

Anyway - heres lawnmowerman which was a pretty good film at the time....

ASP.Net Web Form Routing - Routing Problem

I have put together a web application project that made use of ASP.Net web form routing but I had some strange behaviour on a certain route.

The route i had added to the routes tables was:

routes.Add("Admin", new Route
("Admin",
new PageRouteHandler("~/Admin/help.aspx", true)));

This was to point to a the help.aspx page in the admin folder.

The Problem

When i attempted to browse to this route -

domain.com/admin

Symptoms

Rather than the page all i got was a directory listing in the web page.

Workaround

It appears the routing engine doesnt like a route value to have the same name as the folder it is pointing to.

All I had to do was rename the folder (or route value eg. domain.com/admin/help) and it all started working again.

Im not sure if this is a bug or a feature!

Please post a comment if you know what thy happened.

Thanks

Visual Studio 2010 Finally Released

So Visual Studio 2010 has finally been released. I downloaded our MSDN copy yesterday so today I will be installing in the background while i get on with other stuff - it looks a monster install!

Big thumbs up to the change in versions! What used to be multiple versions to purchase (Architect, Tester, Database, Developer) are now wrapped into Ultimate for us Team Edition users!

I'll let you know how I get on with it as I look at all the new goodies.

Just one last thing - I often recommend LearnVisualStudio.net not only as I am a very happy lifetime member and affiliate but because I truly believe you get a lot for your money - especially if you are just starting out - its where I started out and still keep going back for their new videos.

Anyway back to my original point - they have gone away and re-done their entire Visual Studio for Beginners library for Visual Studio 2010. That is 72 new videos! If you are looking to get the complete training package for peanuts then look no further!

BC30456: 'Title' is not a member of error in ASP.Net

If you get this error when you deploy to a production server but it works ok in development then the cances are you have got a duplicate name issue! This generally occurs when you have a developer that may have copied a web form rather than create a new one.

To resolve the issue simply rename the partial class (name of the underlying .vb or .cs class) and ensure that the inherits from in the aspx matches.

Golden rule is do not copy pages - create anew page and then copy the code! Or look at why you are copying - could you create a re-usable user control for example!?

Restricting Website Access By IP Address in IIS7 - IPRestriction Module

In IIS5 and IIS6 it was pretty straight forward to control access to a website using the directpry security and adding rules into the IP Access Rules.

I came to do this on IIS7 today and it took me a good half hour to find out how to do it so here is a quick run down!

First off you need to enable the IPRestriction module by going into the server roles and adding it.

Next restart your IIS administration console (as the new module doesnt seem to appear until you do).

Next reopen your IIS7 admin console and select the website you want to apply the restriction.

Select the IP4 Address and Domain restriction module.

Add the IP address you want to allow/deny.

IMPORTANT - next you need to set the default rule to apply to unspecified clients.

Simply right click in the IPRestriction module where you added the IP address and select edit feature settings. From there set the default rule to deny if you want to restrict all IP's apart from the ones you specified.

And that is job done!

IIS7 does seem to mash ones head in a bit until you get your head around how it all hangs together.