Microsoft's Kinect for Windows Software Development Kit is out of beta today with a fully supported 1.0 release. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer previously promised that Kinect for Windows would go official on February 1st during his CES keynote last month, and the company delivered the final bits to developers this morning.
The final release adds support for up to four Kinect sensors on one PC, "near mode" functionality for the Kinect for Windows hardware, and the usual fixes and API improvements.


Microsoft says its Kinect for Windows hardware is shipping today in the United States, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Spain and United Kingdom, although an Amazon listing suggests there's a one to two month wait for stock. Retailing at $249, the hardware will provide support for the new "near mode" feature, unique to Kinect for Windows, that allows the depth camera to see objects as close as 50cm away "without losing accuracy or precision." Microsoft says it will introduce special academic pricing of $149 for Qualified Educational Users later this year. Now that developers have the SDK and hardware, all that remains is the magical applications that Microsoft hopes will create a Kinect effect.


In the three months since we released Beta 2, we have made many improvements to our SDK and runtime, including:


  • Support for up to four Kinect sensors plugged into the same computer
  • Significantly improved skeletal tracking, including the ability for developers to control which user is being tracked by the sensor
  • Near Mode for the new Kinect for Windows hardware, which enables the depth camera to see objects as close as 40 centimeters in front of the device
  • Many API updates and enhancements in the managed and unmanaged runtimes
  • The latest Microsoft Speech components (V11) are now included as part of the SDK and runtime installer
  • Improved “far-talk” acoustic model that increases speech recognition accuracy
  • New and updated samples, such as Kinect Explorer, which enables developers to explore the full capabilities of the sensor and SDK, including audio beam and sound source angles, color modes, depth modes, skeletal tracking, and motor controls
  • A commercial-ready installer which can be included in an application’s set-up program, making it easy to install the Kinect for Windows runtime and driver components for end-user deployments.
  • Robustness improvements including driver stability, runtime fixes, and audio fixes