1. A real-time gesture based interactive system, comprising: a processor; a reference camera configured to capture sequences of frames of video data, where each frame of video data comprises intensity information for a plurality of pixels; an alternate view camera configured to capture sequences of frames of video data, where each frame of video data comprises intensity information for a plurality of pixels; and memory containing a hand tracking application; and wherein the hand tracking application configures the processor to: obtain a reference frame of video data from the reference camera where the reference frame of video data is part of a sequence of frames of video data obtained from the reference camera; obtain an alternate view frame of video data from the alternate view camera; identify moving pixels by comparing a previous frame of video data from the sequence of frames of video data with the reference frame of video data to identify pixel value differences exceeding a predetermined threshold; generate a depth map containing distances from the reference camera for pixels in the reference frame of video data using information including the disparity between corresponding pixels within the reference and alternate view frames of video data; identify at least one bounded region within the reference frame of video data containing moving pixels having distances from the reference camera that are within a specific range of distances from the reference camera by: identifying at least one preliminary bounded region within the reference frame of video data containing pixels that are moving, generating the depth map based upon the identified at least one preliminary bounded region in the reference frame of video data so that the depth map contains distances from the reference camera for pixels within the at least one preliminary bounded region in the reference frame of video data, and identifying the at least one bounded region within the at least one preliminary bounded region in the reference frame of video data using the depth map; determine whether any of the pixels within the at least one bounded region within the reference frame are part of a human hand; obtain the sequence of frames of video data from the reference camera; track the motion of the part of the human hand visible in the sequence of frames of video data; confirm that the tracked motion of the part of the human hand visible in the sequence of frames of video data corresponds to a predetermined initialization gesture; and commence tracking the human hand as part of a gesture based interactive session.