Kinect for Windows SDK – Version 1.5 Released

Microsoft has released Kinect SDK for Windows – Version 1.5  on yesterday which includes improvements over skeleton tracking and facial tracking features.

The Kinect for Windows SDK enables developers to create applications using C++, C# or Visual Basic, which support gesture and voice recognition using the Kinect for Windows sensor and a PC or embedded device.

As per Kinect SDK for Windows Team – announcement blog from Microsoft

We have added more capabilities to help developers build amazing applications, including:

• Kinect Studio, our new tool which allows developers to record and play back Kinect data, dramatically shortening and simplifying the development lifecycle of a Kinect application. Now a developer writing a Kinect for Windows application can record clips of users in the application’s target environment and then replay those clips at a later time for testing and further development.
• A set of Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) to guide developers on best practices for the creation of Natural User Interfaces using Kinect.
• The Face Tracking SDK, which provides a real-time 3D mesh of facial features—tracking the head position, location of eyebrows, shape of the mouth, etc.
• Significant sample code additions and improvements. There are many new samples in both C++ and C#, plus a “Basics” series of samples with language coverage in C++, C#, and Visual Basic.
• SDK documentation improvements, including new resources as well as migration of documentation to MSDN for easier discoverability and real-time updates.

Also includes

• Seated skeleton tracking  – now the kinect can track the person sitting on a chair or couch.
• Skeletal tracking in Near Range available – It is now possible to receive Skeletal Tracking data when the Kinect camera is in the Near Range Setting.
• Runtime Improvements –
• RGB Image quality
• Joint Orientation – Kinect for Windows runtime provides Joint Orientation information for the skeletons tracked by the ST pipeline. The Joint Orientation is provided in two forms:
1. A Hierarchical Rotation based on a bone relationship defined on the ST joint structure
2. An Absolute Orientation in Kinect camera coordinates.

 

As of this release, the SDK has been divided into a core SDK and a developer toolkit:

1. Kinect for Windows SDK – Version 1.5

Includes drivers for using Kinect sensor on a computer running Windows 7, Windows 8 Consumer Preview, and Windows Embedded Standard 7. In addition, the download includes application programming interfaces (APIs) and device interfaces.

Sized around 220MB

2. Kinect for Windows Developer Toolkit  – Version 1.5

Contains source code samples, Kinect Studio, Face Tracking SDK, and other resources to simplify developing applications using the Kinect for Windows SDK.

Sized around 60MB

Note: The Kinect for Windows v1.5 SDK, driver, and runtime are 100% compatible with Kinect for Windows v1.0 application binaries.

Download the latest Kinect SDK for Windows – Version 1.5 visit

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/kinectforwindows/develop/developer-downloads.aspx 

 

Source References  & Read more on

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kinectforwindows/archive/2012/05/21/kinect-for-windows-runtime-and-sdk-version-1-5-released.aspx 

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2404694,00.asp 

and also read Microsoft Kinect for Windows SDK and Toolkit – v1.5 Release Notes