Microsoft interface

Microsoft released Kinect software development kit for Windows 7 on June 16, 2011. This SDK will allow developers to write Kinecting apps in C++/CLI, C#, orVisual Basic .NET. The main features are:

1. Raw sensor streams: Access to low-level streams from the depth sensor, color camera sensor, and four-element microphone array.
2. Skeletal tracking: The capability to track the skeleton image of one or two people moving within the Kinect field of view for gesture-driven applications.
3. Advanced audio capabilities: Audio processing capabilities include sophisticated acoustic noise suppression and echo cancellation, beam formation to identify the current sound source, and integration with the Windows speech recognition API.
4. Sample code and Documentation.

In March 2012, Microsoft announced the next version Kinect for Windows 1.5. It adds the following features:

1. The Kinect for Windows 1.5 SDK woud include ‘Kinect Studio’ a new app that allows developers to record, playback, and debug clips of users interacting with applications.
2. Support for new “seated” or “10-joint” skeletal system that will let apps track the head, neck, and arms of a Kinect user – whether they’re sitting down or standing; which would work in default and near mode.
3. Support for four new languages for speech recognition – French, Spanish, Italian, and Japanese. Additionally it would add support for regional dialects of these languages along with English.
4. It would be available in Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan in May and Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, Finland, India, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates in June.

OpenNI interface

The OpenNI framework provides a set of open source APIs. These APIs are intended to become a standard for applications to access natural interaction devices. The API framework itself is also sometimes referred to by the name OpenNI. The APIs provide support for: