Kinect for Windows SDK Announced

Today on the Corporate Microsoft Blog, we announced that the Kinect for Windows Software Development Kit (SDK) will be hitting this spring for free. This SDK will give academic researchers and enthusiasts access to Kinect. There has been a lot of interest by the community for enabling Kinect in Windows and we want to support that as natural user interface (NUI) is very important to us. For more on NUI, I suggest reading this blog post from Steve Clayton which talks about how as a company we are imagining a future full of NUI. And for more information on today’s announcement of the Kinect for Windows SDK, see this post.

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[RaNdOmCoMpUtEr]

Isn't Kinect for like XBox?

 

[niemiro]

Isn't Kinect for like XBox?

Hello!

Yes it is, but the SDK is for programmers to write software. XBOX games are written on computers, and not actually on the XBOX, and so this SDK is required for software developers so that they can create games for the XBOX Kinect.

 

[Shadowjk]

To me I think Gaming should be where you sit down and Use a Controller or a Mouse and keyboard - Not dancing or Jumping in front of a Camera - I feel it isn't Practical

Also Isn't the SDK there because there aren't much Games for the Kinect?

 

[phtsl]

Isn't Kinect for like XBox?

I think so.

 

[ripbox]

didnt someone already crack the kinect for use on the pc?
im not much of a console person but my be willing to get one for PC games in the future.....
though from what i saw the kinect could be used to hel room design as it scans the room for wall n object ect, would take a lot of effort out from design n planning..... could become a very useful tool for inertia designers

 

[tom982]

To me I think Gaming should be where you sit down and Use a Controller or a Mouse and keyboard - Not dancing or Jumping in front of a Camera - I feel it isn't Practical

Also Isn't the SDK there because there aren't much Games for the Kinect?

The SDK was released because Kinect has already had open source drivers created for it, and Microsoft basically want to see where the "hackers" will take it. Its quite clever really, they get their research done for them and the console gets more publicity.

"As breakthrough technologies like these reach scale, the resulting creativity and invention will open up a whole new world of possibilities for computing,"

didnt someone already crack the kinect for use on the pc?

Its not a question of it being cracked, it just needed someone to write the code to basically tell the computer how to use the device (a driver). It has been released as an open source project, and can be found here:

https://github.com/OpenKinect/libfreenect

Tom