Commercial Kinect for Windows SDK Expected Early Next Year
It seems fitting that Microsoft marked the one year anniversary of its gesture-based Kinect (skeletal tracking) technology on Friday—the week of Halloween.
Among the flurry of announcements was the release of the Kinect for Windows SDK Beta 2. Like its predecessors, Beta 2 is for non-commercial app development only.
The biggest news is that Microsoft has finally announced a target timeframe for Kinect for Windows SDK v1.0, which will support commercial development, according to the company. The first version of the commercial toolkit (which is version 1 of the current beta 2 tooling) is slated for early 2012.
Windows for Kinect SDK Beta 2 adds support for 64-bit applications and the September Windows 8 Developer Preview (Windows desktop apps only, Metro style apps are not currently supported). Beta 1 and the Beta 1 Refresh supported development of 32-bit Windows 7 apps.
Beta 2 also provides APIs to manage two Kinect devices in the same application. The toolkit, according to Microsoft, includes numerous improvements in performance, memory allocation, skeletal data tracking, speech recognition, audio as well as color and depth images. A Status Changed event was added to provide information on device status. You can read more about the updates here.
The SDK includes most of what you'll need outside of specialized toolkits for speech recognition and DirectX: the Kinect drivers, native and managed APIs, documentation and code samples. You'll also need Visual Studio 2010 Express or Visual Studio 2010 and Kinect for Xbox 360 (retail edition).
One question that largely remained unanswered at BUILD in September was how applications built for Microsoft platforms – Windows 8 on the PCs, Windows 8 Metro Style apps on tablets, Silverlight for Windows Phone apps and Xbox 360 video games—would run on multiple devices. Microsoft is starting to cross-promote the gesture-based Kinect, a clear winner among its recent technologies, on Windows Phone, Xbox game consoles and Windows-based PCs.
The company released an Xbox Live version of Kinectimals for Windows Phone in late October, which enables users to "train" lion and tiger cubs on their Windows Phone and then play with the trained virtual pets in their Kinectimals for Kinect Xbox 360 video game. As someone noted in the comments rating the Windows Phone game, this is the type of stuff the company should promote in its Windows Phone advertisements.
Voice commands, natural user interfaces and sensors represent the next frontier for software development. How do you envision technologies like Kinect being used in non-gaming applications? Are you more likely to check out the Kinect for Windows development environment with a commercial license on the horizon? Express your thoughts below or drop me a line at krichards@1105media.com.
Posted by Kathleen Richards on 11/08/2011 at 6:12 PM