14 DAY TRIAL // On Monday, Microsoft made available for download a new flavor of its Kinect for Windows Developer Toolkit, namely version 1.5.1.
The toolkit is available in conjunction with Kinect for Windows SDK, but it was made available as a separate download back in May.
Thus, Microsoft would make updates to tools, components, and samples included in the Developer Toolkit easier than before, without having to update the entire SDK.
The first update to verify that is now available for download, with better performance and stability to the Kinect Studio, and with a series of other enhancements packed inside as well.
“This update boosts Kinect Studio performance and stability, improves face tracking, and introduces offline documentation support,” Microsoft notes.
“If you have already installed the SDK, simply download the new v1.5.1 Developer Toolkit Update. If you are new to Kinect for Windows, you will want to download both Kinect for Windows SDK v1.5 and Developer Toolkit v1.5.1.”
Following the installation of the new Toolkit flavor, developers will observe reduced CPU usage overhead in Kinect Studio 1.5.1, along with improved toolbar icons in Normal and High Contrast mode.
The update also removes the distortion and flickering in the Color Viewer display during playback on some video cards, and also resolved issues with AMD Radeon HD 5xxx series graphics cards.
Additionally, crashing that occurred during playback of .xed files that were recently saved to a network share was also resolved.
The Face Tracking feature got a series of enhancements as well. The FaceTracking3D-WPF sample was updated to build all configurations, while the Microsoft.Kinect.Toolkit.FaceTracking project will automatically copy appropriate native libraries to the output directory in a post-build step.
Samples included in the Developer Toolkit were also modified, with fixed label captions previously clipped in Audio Explorer, and with reference to Microsoft.Kinect.dll being no longer version-specific in Avateering.
A crash that occurred in Kinect Explorer in locales where “,” is used as the numeric separator was also resolved. Moreover, there are a series of UI polishes that developers will enjoy, along with a series of enhancements to the documentation, which is now available offline as well.
Download Kinect for Windows Developer Toolkit 1.5.1 The Kinect for Windows SDK 1.5 is available via this link