Microsoft has confirmed that the official Kinect PC SDK (Software Development Kit) will be released later this spring and that it will give developers access to features that hasn't been exposed through the hacked drivers.
Most prominently, the SDK will give PC developers access to Kinect's skeletal tracking capabilities which can be used to track body position of up to 2 persons.
The full list of features provided by the SDK:
· The latest advances in audio processing, which include a four-element microphone array with sophisticated acoustic noise and echo cancellation for crystal clear audio.
· Sound source localization for beamforming, which enables the determination of a sound's spatial location, enhancing reliability when integrated with the Microsoft speech recognition API.
· Depth data, which provides the distance of an object from the Kinect camera, as well as the raw audio and image data, which together open up opportunities for creating richer natural user interface experiences.
· Highly performant and robust skeletal tracking capabilities for determining the body positions of one or two persons moving within the Kinect field of view.
· Documentation for the APIs and a description of the SDK architecture.
· Sample code that demonstrates how to use the functionality in the SDK.
