Official MS Kinect SDK Coming to Windows

fredr1k writes "Microsoft figured there is some movement in the Kinect hacking scene. They have now announced a Kinect SDK for Windows. (Though only for Academics & Enthusiasts). 'Ever since the November launch of Kinect for Xbox 360, enthusiasts and academic researchers alike have expressed their excitement and intense interest in the possibilities created by the products ability to enable users to bring games and entertainment to life without using a controller. While Microsoft plans to release a commercial version at a later date, this SDK will be a starter kit to make it simpler for the academic research and enthusiast communities to create rich natural user interfaces using Kinect technology.'"

Not a MS fan, but...

[flogger]

I'm not a huge MS fan, but doing things this way for the "Hacker" community is a lot better than Sony's response to what hacking has been going on with the PS3. Of course, any academicians that create really good stuff will surely find their work inside of the next MS update/release without any credit given or payment. However, that is better than a cease and desist order followed up with a lawsuit.

Re:We are being kinectically assimilated

[mikejuk]

This isn't a good thing and it might even be a bad thing. There already is a semi official SDK from PrimeSense the people who made the Kinect hardware for MS - it just needs a tweek to work with the Kinect (an XML file). They also supply "middleware" to do jobs like body tracking and we have to wait to see what the MS SDK includes. FInally there is the interesting distinction between the non-comercial and commercial SDK - does this mean that anything I create using the non-commercial SDK can't be used commerciall and are they going to charge for the commercial SDK and take a cut from any apps that result? The point is that the semi-official SDK is open source so why bother with the Microsoft SDK with strings attached? I wrote all this up about a week ago but it was ignored by Slashdoters - shame on you :-) http://www.i-programmer.info/news/91-hardware/2030-official-kinect-sdk-who-needs-it.html [i-programmer.info] But it is clear that this is an attempt by MS to take over the Kinect party.