Regarding Kinect and KrPano, a new YouTube video :
Kinect Device manage Krpano Tour thru Devive Driver, C# Developement and Krpano Flash plugin...
In future I try, plan to develop directly in Flash (or Adobe Air).
OK this is a very quick app i have created in order to control gigapixel images with krpano and kinect. This is before microsoft released the official driver. I used openCV to detect my fingers. The result is not so good but as i said before this was very quick. I will continue the effort and if i come with something usable i will publish it.
orbitlab, you are heading in the right direction with using the fingers to trigger when pointed up rather then the entire hand being tracked. the problem with kinects and the "swim to zoom" function have always led to a huge learning curve for people to get used to the system and navigate easily. Right now it looks like you have having some troubles, but you have got the right idea!
are you using TUIO or OSC protocol input to control the panorama?