LIV repurposes Kinect for mixed reality capture without a green screen

Kinect may no longer be a staple of the Xbox experience, but developers are still figuring out how to use it in unique ways. That includes LIV, a company focused on making video capture for VR experiences more accessible, which recently figured out how to repurpose Kinect to capture mixed reality footage without the need for a green screen.

LIV already provides green screen cubes that allow broadcasters to insert themselves into captured VR footage while playing games, making for an experience that's a bit more unique than seeing a pair of floating hands on screen. With Kinect, however, broadcasters may soon be able to ditch the green screen altogether.

LIV recently showed off its setup in action with Beat Saber, a hectic music game that is integrated with LIV's SDK. Check it out below:

The experience is still very much a work in progress, and it only supports the Kinectv2 unit and Oculus Rift for the moment. Support for additional depth-sensing cameras could be added in the future. But for those with a Kinect and a VR headset lying around, you can learn more about getting set up on LIV's Discord server.

While Kinect is essentially dead for Xbox at this point, it's cool to see what developers are still cooking up with the camera's depth-sensing capabilities. As for Microsoft, the company recently announced that Kinect's legacy will live on with Kinect for Azure, a tool built for ambient computing applications. That includes the next version of HoloLens, which will be equipped with the new Kinect sensor bundle.

• See at Amazon
• See at Microsoft Store