This morning, Microsoft unveiled the latest iteration in what has become a series of runtime and SDK updates for its Kinect for Windows peripheral. Enhanced access to the device's various sensors' data, perhaps at least in part addressing the issues that Gary Bradski raised in his recent keynote, encompasses the following improvements:
- Data from the sensor's 3-axis accelerometer is now exposed in the API. This enables detection of the sensor's orientation.
- Extended-range depth data now provides details beyond 4 meters. Extended-range depth data is data beyond the tested and certified ranges and is therefore lower accuracy. For those developers who want access to this data, it’s now available.
- Color camera settings, such as brightness and exposure, can now be set explicitly by the application, allowing developers to tune a Kinect for Windows sensor’s environment.
- The infrared stream is now exposed in the API. This means developers can use the infrared stream in many scenarios, such as calibrating other color cameras to the depth sensor or capturing grayscale images in low-light situations.
- The updated SDK used with the Kinect for Windows sensors allows for faster toggling of IR to support multiple overlapping sensors.
And Microsoft has also made other developer tool improvements:
- Kinect Studio has been updated to support all new sensor data features.
- The SDK ships with a German speech recognition language pack that has been optimized for the sensor's microphone array.
- Skeletal tracking is now supported on multiple sensors within a single application.
- New samples show how to use all the new SDK features. Additionally, a fantastic new sample has been released that demonstrates a best-in-class UI based on the Kinect for Windows Human Interface Guidelines called the Basic User Interactions – WPF sample.
Notable, as well, is the more robust operating system compatibility (the SDK previously only officially comprehended the "Consumer Preview" version of coming-soon Windows 8):
- Windows 8 compatibility. By using the updated Kinect for Windows SDK, you can develop a Kinect for Windows solution for Windows 8 desktop applications.
- The latest SDK supports development with Visual Studio 2012 and the new Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5.
- The Kinect for Windows sensor now works on Windows running in a virtual machine (VM) and has been tested with the following VM environments: Microsoft Hyper-V, VMWare, and Parallels.
And last but not least, in the words of Craig Eisler, the company's General Manager of Kinect for Windows, "I am also thrilled to announce that the Kinect for Windows sensor is now available in China. Developers and business leaders around the world are just beginning to realize what’s possible when the natural user interface capabilities of Kinect are made available for commercial use in Windows environments. I look forward to seeing the innovative things Chinese companies do with this voice and gesture technology, as well as the business and societal problems they are able to solve with it."
For more, see the following coverage:
- BetaNews, and
- TechCrunch
