Kinect for Windows Ships

The company has posted the final 1.0 code and shipped the hardware. So what's new?

Microsoft on Wednesday released the 1.0 code for its Kinect for Windows software development kit and has made the PC version of the Kinect sensor hardware available for sale.

The Kinect for Windows sensor looks like the Kinect for Xbox sensor but you don't need to sit five feet away from it. Now you can put it just 20 inches away, which isn't a bad sitting distance from the monitor. Not surprisingly, Kinect for Windows only works on Windows 7 and 8. Its retail price is $249, and educational customers who qualify can score it for $149.

The Kinect for Windows SDK and runtime are now available under a commercial license, not just a hobbyist license, so developers can create commercial and business applications. It will be interesting to see what shows up on download and shareware sites in the next few months.

Microsoft released the second beta of the SDK in November and has made a few tweeks since then. The Kinect team has outlined the changes since then. They include:

• Support for up to four Kinect sensors plugged into the same computer.
• Significantly improved skeletal tracking, including the ability for developers to control which user is being tracked by the sensor.
• Near Mode for the new Kinect for Windows hardware, which enables the depth camera to see objects as close as 40 centimeters in front of the device.
• Many API updates and enhancements in the managed and unmanaged runtimes.
• The latest Microsoft Speech components (V11) are now included as part of the SDK and runtime installer.
• Improved “far-talk” acoustic model that increases speech recognition accuracy.
• New and updated samples, such as Kinect Explorer, which enables developers to explore the full capabilities of the sensor and SDK, including audio beam and sound source angles, color modes, depth modes, skeletal tracking, and motor controls.
• A commercial-ready installer which can be included in an application’s set-up program, making it easy to install the Kinect for Windows runtime and driver components for end-user deployments.
• Robustness improvements including driver stability, runtime fixes, and audio fixes.

Microsoft said it plans to update the Kinect for Windows SDK and runtime around two to three times per year.

• Windows
• Microsoft
• Kinect
• Microsoft
• motion detection
• sensor
• Windows