Microsoft has officially shown the Kinect for Windows v2 hardware and it looks amazing. What are the specs and what can we do with it?
The following are the description of the look and specs of the Kinect for Windows v2 as provided by Microsoft:
Sensor
The sensor closely resembles the Kinect for Xbox One, except that it says "Kinect" on the top panel, and the Xbox Nexus-the stylized green "x"-has been changed to a simple, more understated power indicator:
Hub and power supply
The sensor requires a couple other components to work: the hub and the power supply. Tying everything together is the hub (top item pictured below), which accepts three connections: the sensor, USB 3.0 output to PC, and power. The power supply (bottom item pictured below) does just what its name implies: it supplies all the power the sensor requires to operate. The power cables will vary by country or region, but the power supply itself supports voltages from 100-240 volts.
What's different between the new Kinect for XBox One and the Kinect for Windows v2? It turns out not a lot. The Kinect for XBox has a special USB 3.0 adapter that draws both lots of power as well as data from the XBox One. Because it is a non-standard connector, it can't be plugged straight into a PC (unlike with the original Kinect which had a standard USB 2.0 plug).
To make the new Kinect work with a PC, then, requires a special breakout board. This board serves as an adapter with three ports - one for the Kinect, one for a power source, finally one for a standard USB 3.0 cable.
We can also probably expect the firmware on the two versions of the new Kinect sensor to also diverge over time as occurred with the original Kinect.
Skeleton detection is greatly improved with the new Kinect. Not only are more joints now detected, but many of the jitters developers became used to working around are now gone. The new SDK recognizes up to 6 skeletons rather than just two. Finally, because of the improved Time-of-Flight depth camera, which replaces the Primesense technology used in the previous hardware, the accuracy of the skeleton detection is much better and includes excellent hand detection. Grip recognition as well as Lasso recognition (two fingers used to draw) are now available out of the box - even in this early alpha version of the SDK.
And here are some of the thing that has been done with the Kinect for Windows:
