Kinect holds the Guinness World Record as the fastest selling consumer electronics device, with sales surpassing 10 million units as of 9 March 2011.

Kinect achieves this through a natural user interface by tracking the user's body movement and by using gestures and spoken commands. Launched in November 2010, Kinect is a motion sensing USB (Universal Serial Bus) input device by Microsoft that enables users to control and naturally interact with games and other programs without the need to physically touch a game controller or object of any kind. Finally, we discuss some usability aspects of Kinoogle and similar NUIs for controlling 3-D virtual globes (including possible future improvements), and propose a number of unique, practical 'use scenarios' where such NUIs could prove useful in navigating a 3-D virtual globe, compared to conventional mouse/3-D mouse and keyboard-based interfaces. Readers interested in trying out the application on their own hardware can download a Zip archive (included with the manuscript as additional files 1, 2, & 3) that contains a 'Kinnogle installation package for Windows PCs'. We survey a number of approaches and application examples for controlling 3-D virtual globes using the Kinect sensor, then describe Kinoogle, a Kinect interface for natural interaction with Google Earth, developed by students at Texas A&M University. The different software drivers available for connecting the Kinect device to a PC (Personal Computer) are also covered, and their comparative pros and cons briefly discussed. The paper introduces the Microsoft Kinect device, briefly describing how it works (the underlying technology by PrimeSense), as well as its market uptake and application potential beyond its original intended purpose as a home entertainment and video game controller. This paper covers the use of depth sensors such as Microsoft Kinect and ASUS Xtion to provide a natural user interface (NUI) for controlling 3-D (three-dimensional) virtual globes such as Google Earth (including its Street View mode), Bing Maps 3D, and NASA World Wind.

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