BigBANGtheory Posted June 16, 2011 Posted June 16, 2011 Microsoft released the beta Kinect SDK today, I know a fair few DCS fans have been waiting for progress on this and thought it worth sharing. You need Windows 7 to run it and they have released a 32 & 64bit installer. I hope this pushes NaturalPoint into somekind of action they have been keeping quiet for sometime now.
PlainSight Posted June 16, 2011 Posted June 16, 2011 Microsoft released the beta Kinect SDK today, I know a fair few DCS fans have been waiting for progress on this and thought it worth sharing. You need Windows 7 to run it and they have released a 32 & 64bit installer. I hope this pushes NaturalPoint into somekind of action they have been keeping quiet for sometime now. Will they put it out for PC? I've seen headtracking in forza 4 and it looks very awesome! [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
chrilith Posted June 17, 2011 Posted June 17, 2011 Interesting. I'll take a look at it to see what can be done and perhaps add something more to my LUA module :)
BigBANGtheory Posted June 17, 2011 Author Posted June 17, 2011 Will they put it out for PC? I've seen headtracking in forza 4 and it looks very awesome! The purpose of the SDK is to allow people to write non-comercial applications which support the Kinect hardware. This includes the PC and you should be able to recognise the Kinect in Windows 7 without using opensource and hacked drivers anymore. To connect the Kinect to a PC you need a special power adapter which supplies the Kinect with more juice and also gives you a standard USB interface to plug it into the PC (or one of the older xbox360 units). Initially they were a bit pricey but now they are very cheap I got one the other day for about £10. If memory serves ED very kindly released a headtracking API recently which in theory could be used in conjunction with the Kinect SDK. If anyone is working on such a project and wants a tester PM me, I can hook up my Kinect to my Win7(x64) PC.
Mnemonic Posted June 17, 2011 Posted June 17, 2011 I hope this pushes NaturalPoint into somekind of action they have been keeping quiet for sometime now. Unfortunately current Kinect SDK doesn't track head rotations. And it can track head position (without rotations) only if you stand like 2 meters away from the device. By the way you must stand! SDK will not detect you if it didn't see your legs. However it does give you the ability to read raw data from Kinect depth sensor, which, perhaps can be used for custom head-tracking. Besides, current beta SDK have bunch of bugs, even obvious ones, like you cant shut down Kinect's IR Emitter after working with it, it will constantly work until system reboot or you unplug USB.
Caldwell Posted June 17, 2011 Posted June 17, 2011 I had a short look into the SDK examples and as Mnemonic (and the website) states Head tracking/rotation is currently not supported. I'm waiting for a new, improved version of the SDK. It would however be possible to incorporate the Kinect Depth Sensor with the existing regular video (= webcam) head tracking options such as FaceTrackNOIR. It would at least improve depth movement. Note that the Kinect requires a minimal distance of 50cm for the IR sensor to receive data from the emitter rays.
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