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Microsoft’s Kinect for Windows SDK had been in beta for a while and yesterday Microsoft released version 1 of the developer kit. The kit includes the drivers for the Kinect sensor, APIs and sample code.

UPDATE, here are the changes since the beta.

In the three months since we released Beta 2, we have made many improvements to our SDK and runtime, including:

  • 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

Download the SDK from Microsoft.com

The Kinect for Windows SDK enables developers to create applications that support gesture and voice recognition, using Kinect sensor technology on computers running Windows 7, Windows 8 developer preview (desktop apps only), and Windows Embedded-based devices.

The Kinect for Windows SDK includes the following:

  • Drivers for using Kinect sensor devices on a computer running Windows 7 or Windows 8 developer preview (desktop apps only)
  • Application programming interfaces (APIs) and device interfaces, along with technical documentation
  • Source code samples

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