It’s due for release ”later this spring” as Microsoft finally embrace the PC community tinkering with this new tech. The SDK lets us have real access to Kinect features.
While the ‘hacks’ for Kinect have done a tremendous job of pulling data from the Kinect motion camera, it still can’t beat official code from Microsoft. We get full access to the ”skeletal tracking capabilities for determining the body positions of one or two persons moving within the Kinect field of view”, they boast.
At first the corporate giant was rather quiet and refuted claims that Kinect had been ‘hacked’, but soon they started commending the amazing ingenuity of coders out there pulling off some rather quirky achievements. They announced an official SDK would be released.
Also planned for inclusion is easier access to the four-element microphone array, plus”sound source localisation for beamforming, which enables the determination of a sound’s spatial location”. Detailed documentation will accompany the SDK.
Microsoft Research details the Kinect for Windows SDK beta.
