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Azure Kinect and Kinect Windows v2 comparison

The Azure Kinect DK hardware and Software Development Kits have differences from Kinect for Windows v2. Any existing Kinect for Windows v2 applications will not work directly with Azure Kinect DK and will require porting to the new SDK.

Hardware

High-level differences between the Azure Kinect development kit and Kinect for Windows v2 are listed in the following table.

Feature Type Azure Kinect DK Kinect for Windows v2
Audio Details 7-mic circular array 4-mic linear phased array
Motion sensor Details 3-axis accelerometer 3-axis gyro 3-axis accelerometer
RGB Camera Details 3840 x 2160 px @30 fps 1920 x 1080 px @30 fps
Depth Camera Method Time-of-Flight Time-of-Flight
Resolution 640 x 576 px @30 fps 512 x 424 px @ 30 fps
512 x 512 px @30 fps
1024x1024 px @15 fps
Connectivity Data USB3.1 Gen 1 with type USB-C USB 3.1 gen 1
Power External PSU or USB-C External PSU
Synchronization RGB & Depth internal, external device-to-device RGB & Depth internal only
Mechanical Dimensions 103 x 39 x 126 mm 249 x 66 x 67 mm
Mass 440 g 970 g
Mounting One ¼-20 UNC. Four internal screw points One ¼-20 UNC

Find additional details in the Azure Kinect DK hardware document.

Sensor access

The following table provides low-level device sensor access capability comparison.

Functionality Azure Kinect Kinect for Windows Notes
Depth ✔️ ✔️
IR ✔️ ✔️
Color ✔️ ✔️ Color format supports differences, Azure Kinect DK supports these camera controls: Exposure, white balance, brightness, contrast, saturation, sharpness, and gain control
Audio ✔️ ✔️ Azure Kinect DK mics are accessed via Speech SDK or Windows native API
IMU ✔️ Azure Kinect DK has a full 6-axis IMU and Kinect for Windows only provides 1-axis
Calibration data ✔️ ✔️ OpenCV compatible camera model calibration
Depth-RGB internal sync ✔️ ✔️
External Sync ✔️ Azure Kinect DK allows programmable delay for external sync
Share access with multiple clients ✔️ The Azure Kinect Sensor SDK relies on WinUSB/libUSB to access device and does not have a service implemented to enable sharing device access with multiple processes
Stream record / playback tool ✔️ ✔️ Azure Kinect DK uses an open-source Matroska container-based implementation

Features

The Azure Kinect SDK feature set is different from Kinect for Windows v2, as detailed below:

Kinect v2 Feature Kinect v2 Data Type Azure Kinect SDK/Service
Sensor Data Access DepthFrame Sensor SDK - Retrieve images
InfraredFrame Sensor SDK - Retrieve images
ColorFrame Sensor SDK - Retrieve images
AudioBeamFrame Not currently supported
Body Tracking BodyFrame Body Tracking SDK
BodyIndexFrame Body Tracking SDK
Coordinate Mapping CoordinateMapper Sensor SDK - Image transformations
Face Tracking FaceFrame Azure AI services: Face
Speech Recognition N/A Azure AI Speech

Next steps

Kinect for Windows developer pages