Kinect for Windows now available | Hacker News Reader

Kinect for Windows now available

mashable.com

56 pointsiamandrus31 comments

I still don't understand; why is Kinect for Windows $249 while Kinect for XBox $149? Doesn't the Kinect for XBox actually work in Windows?

From their blog: "The ability to sell Kinect for Xbox 360 at its current price point is in large part subsidized by consumers buying a number of Kinect games, subscribing to Xbox LIVE, and making other transactions associated with the Xbox 360 ecosystem. In addition, the Kinect for Xbox 360 was built for and tested with the Xbox 360 console only, which is why it is not licensed for general commercial use, supported or under warranty when used on any other platform."

The hardware is also a little more advanced, supporting "near mode" detection.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kinectforwindows/

I suppose it remains to be seen whether they'll sell as well at $249 and as a separate device vs. $149 and readily available as $100 and only needing one for both purposes. I suspect they'll sell, but at reduced volume and excluding major potential demographics.

They might do better to work towards building such an ecosystem for Windows, particularly given the wide range of uses and high level of interest which were demonstrated. "Warranty support" has not been high on the consumer values list in the existing ecosystem, so much as "cheap accessible cameras" and "does cool stuff."

As a hobbyist, I'm not sure that's worth the extra $100. I've been considering picking one up to play with.

kinect is highly discounted by most retailers around the year. Though the xbox kinect sells for 149, many places sell it for 99. So you can wait for a few months and hopefully this will get cheaper too

Depending on what you're going to use it for, I would recommend just sticking with the XBox Kinect and either of the major other options: OpenKinect (http://openkinect.org/) or OpenNI (http://www.openni.org/)

I want one to play with and I'm a Linux OS user. I should have picked one up at $99 over the holidays.

The comments from the msdn blog are interesting in indicating the lifetime customer value of XBox users with a Kinect to Microsoft.

The extra cost might be worth it, if the documentation and examples were much more than simple library descriptions. I am thinking more of being able to grok the hardware/software driver interface than the higher-level calls.

Any fellow HN'ers with early insight to how good the Microsoft Kinect SDK extras look?

Still available for $99 at some places.

E.g. http://www.buy.com/prod/xbox-360-kinect-sensor-holiday-bundl...

If you're worried about the cost of Windows and the development tools as part of that, if you're in a startup then it's likely that you qualify for BizSpark where you can get full Windows licenses and copies of Visual Studio for free: http://bit.ly/uBC9Ol

You can't use the Kinect SDK with Linux.

If you're interested in learning more about the driver interface, OpenKinect is FOSS and runs on any platform: http://openkinect.org

I have a Kinect for XBox and I have tried some of the non official drivers, and it works. I don't know why there is such a think as a Kinect for Windows, the hardware should be the same, using the API Microsoft just released...

Hardware is not the same. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kinectforwindows/

kinect for windows has better hardware which can see objects much nearer to it.

I.e. it is designed operate at the distance you sit from your computer monitor.

Actually, the hardware is likely unchanged.

The original "Kinect for XBox" can see that close, but with error. The biggest changes are in the firmware and the Microsoft Kinect SDK. The SDK itself didn't allow for any data that close.

Can you upgrade the firmware on the Xbox version?

Probably not - if so, it'll be something that comes from the hacking community, not from Microsoft.

I would argue that you don't need different hardware to see "closer" to the sensors - probably just recalibrated hardware and altered focusing systems dressed up as new hardware to justify the price increase. Would be interested in an iFixIt teardown for confirmation, though.

I suspect the lens that diverges the laser projected pattern would need to be adjusted in order to get the proper sized pattern at the optimal distance. i.e. The lens would need to be more diverging.

Right. Altered, reconfigured, calibrated differently, etc. but not actually different hardware. It's a different lens, not a different lens system, for instance.

No, I think the hardware is exactly the same. There's a firmware update.

This is discussed on the Kinect blog here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kinectforwindows/archive/2012/01/20/...

"As I mentioned in the original post, the Kinect for Windows device has new firmware which enables the depth camera to see objects as close as 50 centimeters in front of the device without losing accuracy or precision... The lenses on the Kinect for Windows sensor are the same as the Kinect for Xbox 360 sensor, so near mode does not change the field of view as some people have been speculating."

I can't wait to see what sorts of apps come out of this. I have a dual 30'' display set up, and I'd love to be able to have some sort of "cursor follows my eyes" type of feature so that I can quickly move around all of that screen real estate.

My question is: why don't apps already exist? It's not like they haven't had a beta for months... why lose the momentum of a launch and not have some killer apps they can demo?

I must be missing something, because I don't see anything it will do for me out of the box.

I wonder if that isn't a hint at some flaw with the SDK or hardware. Usually MS is very gung ho about having early adopters through all of their various betas and early access plans and previews and etc.

Near mode lacks skeleton tracking - I'd expect more after the skeleton tracking is fixed.

This would be ridiculously awesome together with blink=click.

Hah, that does sound interesting, but the last thing I need is a repetitive strain injury in my eye muscles.

You could do this already with a high enough resolution camera - the Kinect doesn't add anything new that makes this more possible.

Well, I'm disappointed that I won't be able to make my dream app without buying new hardware: a gesture recognizer that allows me to close programs by giving them the finger.

I think the real question is whether this will be integrated into Windows 8. Sounds like an amazing opportunity for MS to leapfrog iOS.

I'd imagine it'll include the core SDKs and an option for OEMs to include built-in Kinect support (like Asus is doing).

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