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Kinect for Windows Developer Toolkit Changelog

What's new in Kinect for Windows Developer Toolkit 1.8.0.572

Sep 19, 2013
  • Kinect Background Removal:
  • The new Background Removal API provides "green screen" capabilities for a single person. The user can be specified using skeleton ID. The BackgroundRemovedColorStream API uses various image processing techniques to improve the stability and accuracy of the player mask originally contained in each depth frame. The stream can be configured to select any single player as the foreground and remove the remaining color pixels from the scene.
  • Webserver for Kinect Data Streams:
  • New web components and samples give HTML5 applications access to Kinect data for interactions and visualization. This is intended to allow HTML5 applications running in a browser to connect to the sensor through a server running on the local machine. Use this to create kiosk applications on dedicated machines. The webserver component is a template that can be used as-is or modified as needed.
  • Color Capture and Camera Pose Finder for Kinect Fusion:
  • Kinect Fusion provides 3D object scanning and model creation using a Kinect for Windows sensor. With this release, users can scan a scene with the Kinect camera (now optionally also capturing low-resolution color) and simultaneously see, and interact with, a detailed 3D model of the scene. There is also support for recovering the camera pose once tracking has been lost, without having to find the very last tracked position or reset the whole reconstruction, by moving the camera close to one of the original camera positions during initial reconstruction. We also added an API to both the original depth reconstruction and new color reconstruction interfaces to match the "ExportVolumeBlock" and import a volume block. This is restricted to importing at the resolution of the created volume.
  • Introducing New Samples:
  • Adaptive UI-WPF: This new sample demonstrates the basics of adaptive UI that is displayed on screen in the appropriate location and size based on the user's height, distance from the screen, and field of view. The sample provides settings for interaction zone boundaries, tracks users and transitions as they move between far range and tactile range.
  • Webserver Basics-WPF: This sample demonstrates how to use the Microsoft.Samples.Kinect.Webserver component to serve Kinect data on a localhost port. The component and sample require .NET 4.5 (Visual Studio 2012) and Windows 8 (or later).
  • Background Removal Basics-D2D, Background Removal Basics-WPF: Demonstrates how to use the KinectBackgroundRemoval API. This is an improved version of the Coordinate Mapping sample (previously named Green Screen sample in 1.7).
  • Kinect Fusion Explorer Multi Static Cameras-WPF: This demonstrates having multiple static Kinect cameras integrate into the same reconstruction volume, given user-defined transformations for each camera. A new 3rd person view and basic WPF graphics are also enabled to provide way for users to visually explore a reconstruction scene during setup and capture.
  • Kinect Fusion Color Basics-D2D, Kinect Fusion Color Basics-WPF: Demonstrates the basics of Kinect Fusion for 3D reconstruction, now including low-resolution color capture.
  • Kinect Fusion Head Scanning-WPF: Demonstrates how to leverage a combination of Kinect Fusion and Face Tracking to scan high resolution models of faces and heads.
  • Updated Samples
  • Kinect Fusion Explorer-D2D, Kinect Fusion Explorer-WPF: Demonstrates additional features of Kinect Fusion for 3D reconstruction, now including low-resolution color capture. Please review the documentation for the hardware and software requirements. (Note: Suitable DirectX11 graphics card required for real-time reconstruction). The Explorer samples have been updated to always create a volume with the option of capturing color, hence GPU memory requirements have doubled compared to the v1.7 Explorer samples for the same voxel resolutions. Kinect Fusion Explorer-D2D also now integrates the Camera Pose Finder for increased robustness to failed tracking.
  • Coordinate Mapping Basics-WPF, Coordinate Mapping Basics-D2D: These samples were previously named Green Screen in 1.7, renamed to Coordinate Mapping Basics in 1.8.

New in Kinect for Windows Developer Toolkit 1.7.0.510 (Mar 19, 2013)

  • Introducing new Kinect Interactions:
  • Press for Selection. This provides, along with the new KinectInteraction Controls, improved selection capability and faster interactions. If you’re familiar with previous Kinect for Windows interaction capabilities, this replaces the hover select concept.
  • Grip and Move for Scrolling. This provides, along with the new KinectInteraction Controls, 1-to-1 manipulation for more precise scrolling, as well as large fast scrolls with a fling motion. If you’re familiar with previous Kinect for Windows interaction capabilities, this replaces the hover scroll model.
  • New interactions work best with the following setup:
  • User stands 1.5 - 2.0 meters away from the sensor
  • Sensor mounted directly above or below the screen showing the application, and centered
  • Screen size < 46 inches
  • Avoid extreme tilt angles
  • As always, avoid lots of natural light and reflective materials for more reliable tracking
  • Engagement Model Enhancements:
  • The Engagement model determines which user is currently interacting with the Kinect-enabled application. This has been greatly enhanced to provide more natural interaction when a user starts interacting with the application, and particularly when the sensor detects multiple people. Developers can also now override the supplied engagement model as desired.
  • APIs, Samples, and DLL Details:
  • A set of WPF interactive controls are provided to make it easy to incorporate these interactions into your applications.
  • Two samples use these controls: ControlsBasics-WPF and InteractionGallery-WPF. The controls can also be installed in source form via Toolkit Browser -> “Components” -> Microsoft.Kinect.Toolkit.Controls.
  • InteractionGallery - WPF uses the new KinectInteraction Controls in a customized app experience that demonstrates examples of navigation, engagement, article reading, picture viewing, video playback, and panning with grip. It was designed for 1920x1080 resolution screens in landscape layout. For those building applications with UI technologies other than WPF, the lower level InteractionStream APIs (native or managed) are available to build on top of. Native DLLs for InteractionStream are Kinect_Interaction170_32.dll and Kinect_Interaction170_64.dll under %KINECT_TOOLKIT_DIR%\Redist. Managed DLL for InteractionStream is Microsoft.Kinect.Toolkit.Interaction.dll found in %KINECT_TOOLKIT_DIR%\Assemblies.
  • There is no sample of InteractionStream API usage, however, Microsoft.Kinect.Toolkit.Controls source code (see info about controls samples above) is available and is a great example of using InteractionStream.
  • Kinect Fusion:
  • KinectFusion provides 3D object scanning and model creation using a Kinect for Windows sensor. The user can paint a scene with the Kinect camera and simultaneously see, and interact with, a detailed 3D model of the scene. Kinect Fusion can be run at interactive rates on supported GPUs, and can run at non-interactive rates on a variety of hardware. Running at non-interactive rates may allow larger volume reconstructions.
  • Kinect Fusion Samples:
  • Kinect Fusion Basics - WPF, Kinect Fusion Basics - D2D: Demonstrates basic use of the Kinect Fusion APIs for 3D reconstruction.
  • Kinect Fusion Explorer - WPF, Kinect Fusion Explorer - D2D: Demonstrates advanced 3D reconstruction features of Kinect Fusion, allowing adjustment of many reconstruction parameters, and export of reconstructed meshes.
  • Kinect Fusion Tech Specs:
  • Kinect Fusion can process data either on a DirectX 11 compatible GPU with C++ AMP, or on the CPU, by setting the reconstruction processor type during reconstruction volume creation. The CPU processor is best suited to offline processing as only modern DirectX 11 GPUs will enable real-time and interactive frame rates during reconstruction.
  • Kinect Sensor Chooser - native:
  • The Kinect Sensor Chooser is a native component that allows simplified management of the Kinect Sensor lifetime, and an enhanced user experience when dealing with missing sensors, unpowered sensors, or sensors that get unplugged while an application is running. It provides similar capabilities to the KinectSensorChooser in the Microsoft.Kinect.Toolkit component. A NuiSensorChooserUI control is also provided for use in native applications. It provides a user experience similar to the managed KinectSensorChooserUI.
  • Introducing New Samples:
  • Controls Basics - WPF: Demonstrates the new KinectInteraction Controls, including hands-free button pressing and scrolling through large lists. This replaces the Basic Interactions sample from previous releases.
  • Interaction Gallery - WPF: Demonstrates basic interactions using the new KinectInteraction Controls.
  • KinectBridge with MATLAB Basics - D2D: Demonstrates how to do image processing with the Kinect sensor using MATLAB API.
  • KinectBridge with OpenCV Basics - D2D: Demonstrates how to do image processing with the Kinect sensor using OpenCV API.
  • Kinect Explorer - D2D: Demonstrates how to use the Kinect's ColorImageStream, DepthImageStream, SkeletonStream, and AudioSource with C++ and Direct2D. This replaces the SkeletalViewer C++ sample.
  • Kinect Fusion Basics - WPF, Kinect Fusion Basics - D2D: Demonstrates basic use of the Kinect Fusion APIs for 3D reconstruction.
  • Kinect Fusion Explorer - WPF, Kinect Fusion Explorer - D2D: Demonstrates advanced 3D reconstruction features of Kinect Fusion, allowing adjustment of many reconstruction parameters, and export of reconstructed meshes.

New in Kinect for Windows Developer Toolkit 1.5.1.180 (Jun 19, 2012)

  • We made the following performance and stability improvements to Kinect Studio 1.5.1:
  • Reduced CPU usage overhead.
  • Improved toolbar icons in Normal and High Contrast mode.
  • Eliminated distortion and flickering that occurred in the Color Viewer display during playback using some video cards.
  • Fixed hanging that occurred using AMD Radeon HD 5xxx series graphics cards.
  • Fixed crashing that occurred during playback of .xed files that were recently saved to a network share.
  • We made the following improvements to the Face Tracking feature:
  • The Microsoft.Kinect.Toolkit.FaceTracking project now automatically copies the appropriate native libraries to the output directory in a post-build step.
  • The FaceTracking3D-WPF sample now builds all configurations.
  • We made the following fixes to the Samples:
  • Audio Explorer – Fixed label captions that were clipped.
  • Avateering – Reference to Microsoft.Kinect.dll is no longer version-specific.
  • Kinect Explorer – Fixed crash that occurred in locales where “,” is used as the numeric separator.
  • Polished the user interface in some samples.
  • We made the following enhancements to the documentation