14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft is doing its best to push Kinect-powered next generation NUI experiences to additional form factors beyond the Xbox 360 console.
The software development kit designed to enable devs to build projects leveraging the NUI peripheral connected to Windows 7 machines is slated to hit Beta in the spring of 2011.
The Kinect for Windows SDK Beta page on Microsoft Research is already live, with the software giant encouraging developers to sign-up for release announcements, updates, news, as well as additional content on the upcoming programming toolkit.
Created by Microsoft Research in collaboration with the Interactive Entertainment Business (IEB), the Kinect for Windows SDK will be offered to an audience of academic researchers and enthusiasts, meaning that it’s essentially available under a non-commercial license.
At MIX11, the Redmond company highlighted some of the features that Kinect for Windows SDK Beta will sport, including:
“• Robust Skeletal Tracking for high-performance capabilities that track the skeleton image of one or two persons moving within the Kinect field of view;
• Advanced Audio Capabilities, including four-element microphone array with sophisticated acoustic noise and echo cancellation for great audio; beam formation to identify the current sound source and integration with the Windows speech recognition API also included;
• XYZ depth camera for standard color camera stream access and depth data that indicates the distance of the object from the Kinect camera.”
Of course, as with all other Microsoft SDKs, the Kinect for Windows programming toolkit will also bring to the table additional goodies.
Of extreme importance to developers is sample code set up to make it easier to leverage all the functionality built into the SDK as well as the Kinect features.
And of course, no SDK would be complete without the documentation necessary allowing devs to gain insight into the programming toolkit’s architecture, as well as the APIs (application programming interfaces) used.