Microsoft releases a Windows Kinect SDK

GAMING SOFTWARE DEVELOPER Microsoft has released a Windows software development kit (SDK) for its Kinect motion sensor gaming controller.

Microsoft has enjoyed considerable success with its innovative Kinect motion detector for the Xbox 360. However, by the firm's own admission, some of the most creative uses for Kinect have come from PC developers who had to hack the Kinect in order to get access to its data streams. Now Microsoft has released a Windows SDK that will give developers access to the raw data streams collected by the Kinect's sensors.

The Windows Kinect SDK provides developers with data from the depth sensor, colour camera sensor and the microphone array, and will allow them to work with the high speed skeletal tracking system. Microsoft also released a wedge of documentation to get developers going.

Microsoft held a 24 hour coding marathon where 50 developers were asked to see what they could manage to conjure up, and the results were pretty impressive.

Kinect has been a rare beacon of light for Microsoft in the past year. The firm claims to have sold more than 10 million Kinect controllers and it's not hard to see why. The technology is compelling and offers the ability to create gesture driven interfaces, something that many firms including AMD, ARM and Intel have said will become the focus of operating system development in the coming years.

At present the SDK works only on Windows 7, however it's likely that a bunch of smart Linux developers will find a way of porting it over to that operating system before too long. µ