Kinect for Windows Programming Guide

Welcome to version 2 of the Kinect for Windows Software Development Kit (SDK). The SDK provides the tools and APIs, both native and managed, that you need to develop Kinect-enabled applications for Microsoft Windows. Developing Kinect-enabled applications is essentially the same as developing other Windows applications, except that the Kinect SDK provides support for the features of the Kinect, including color images, depth images, audio input, and skeletal data.

Here are some examples of the types of Windows applications that you can build using the functionality supported in this SDK:

• Recognize and track moving people using skeletal tracking.
• Determine the distance between an object and the sensor camera using depth data.
• Capture audio using noise and echo cancellation or find the location of the audio source.
• Enable voice-activated applications by programming a grammar for use with a speech recognition engine.

Contents of the Kinect for Windows SDK

The SDK includes:

• Drivers and technical documentation for implementing Kinect-enabled applications using a Kinect for Windows sensor.
• Reference APIs and documentation for programming in managed and unmanaged code. The APIs deliver multiple media streams with minimal software latency across various video, CPU, and device variables.
• Samples that demonstrate good practices for using a Kinect sensor.
• Example code that breaks down the samples into user tasks.

In this section

• Lean tracking
  Demonstrates how to use the lean tracking APIs.
• Body tracking
  Discusses how to use Kinect body tracking.
• Face tracking
  This topic provides an overview of the programming model for Kinect face tracking.
• High definition face tracking
  Discusses the PayForPlay high definition face tracking API.
• Coordinate mapping
  This topic explains how to use coordinate mapping to project Kinect data between coordinate spaces.
• Kinect API Overview
  Provides an overview of the APIs available for Kinect for Windows apps.