The Kinect is one of the most ineresting Hardware attachments that gaming as seen as of late. Originally for the Xbox 360, it has seen most of its success with the rhythm game genre in titles like “Dance Central”. Despite this, I’ve always looked at the Kinect’s potential in avenues other than games. It’s ability to navigate the Xbox Dashboard is one really clear example of this. Most exciting, however, is how this new technology is now being adapted for general use with Windows PCs.
Let’s go over some of the new features that are going to be a part of the Kinect’s utilization with Windows. First and foremost, the Kinect will come equipped with a complete SDK:
[quote]The Kinect for Windows SDK offers an installer, which makes it easy to install the Kinect for Windows runtime and driver components for end-user deployment.[/quote]
Something that will surely be appreciated by anyone wishing to develop some interesting new uses for this hardware. On top of this, and something really exciting in its own right, users will be able to connect multiple Kinects to the same PC:
[quote]The Kinect for Windows sensor expands the possibilities for innovation with features like Near Mode, which enables the depth camera to see objects as close as 40 centimeters in front of the sensor. In addition, up to 4 Kinect sensors can now be plugged into the same computer.[/quote]
I’m no hardware developer, but I’m sure some really fascinating stuff can be done with 4 Kinects viewing the same object from different angles. Complete 3D mapping or real world objects? But it’s not just the fact that multiple Kinects are available to be used in conjuncture with one another, but the Kinect’s performance itself has been improved:
[quote]One of the many improvements to the Kinect for Windows SDK is improved skeletal tracking, which lets developers control which user is being tracked by the sensor. In addition, the latest Microsoft Speech components, along with an improved acoustic model significantly improve speech recognition accuracy.[/quote]
Working with the Kinect won’t require any interested user to have the world’s most powerful rig either. With only 2 gigs of RAM and a 2.66 GHz processor (in addition to some basics like USB input and at least a 32 bit processor) working with the Kinect will be very accessible to anyone who is interested.
So what does all this boil down to? Development of new uses for a piece of really versatile technology. I am fully confident that we’ll start seeing the results of this opportunity surface before long. So for those of us that aren’t brilliant software designers (such as myself), lets sit back and enjoy the fruits of their labor. For those of you that are so brilliant… get ready to get to work!
All quotes pulled from: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/kinectforwindows/
