I am using Xbox-Unity and am trying to make a Kinect game. I need to be able to know when a player’s foot is in the air and when it comes back down on the ground. I thought that this would be as simple as tracking the Joint Positions but the foot’s Y changes based on the proximity to the Kinect Camera (Taking the foot joint position from Kinect). If I lifted my left foot up far away from the camera, it’s Y would be high(let’s say 10). If it were to land close to the camera, the Y would be low(let’s say -20). What I had hoped was that I could just say 0 is the floor and have an easy time knowing when a foot was in the air and when it was on the ground. Does anybody have any ideas on how I can correctly tell when a foot is grounded?(everything I can think of so far had at least one exception that would make the gameplay broken)
Edit: Used a point to plane equation but no matter what I do, the distance to floor is always different based on my proximity to the camera.
One possibility would be to compare it to the other foot.. if one is higher than the other, chances are they’re standing on the other foot. If you’re looking to detect jumps, you should be able to find a sudden change in the y position of both feet.
There’s also the Floor Clipping Plane, but that involves some more complicated math from what I’ve seen. Check out the Kinect programming guide, which is super old but I think should still be relevant here. The section “Floor Determination” is what you’re after.