Basically, I don't want to shell out the full price of the Kinect as I really don't need it for gaming. Howerver, stuff like

this
and this

made me curious as to whether I can get by with just the sensor hooked up to a PC for basic motion capture, which is around 1/3 to half of the full price of a Kinect.

Furthermore, can anyone up to speed comment on stuff like this (I don't follow console news and hence I'm not even sure what the best source to look for information might be): as rumored about the next version of Kinect?

What do you mean by 'just the sensor'? To me the 'sensor' is kinect. Are you refering to having to buy an xbox+kinect? In which case no you don't, in fact for PC development you are better of buying the standalone Kinect as it comes with the USB power adapter that is needed to run it.

For getting up to speed and learning about the kinect you have two options, either go the with the offical Microsoft drivers and software or with openNI. OpenNI is an initiative run by the company who produce and license the technology in kinect. They also have their own hardware version, though from memory its not cheaper and hard to get hold of. Then there is the ASUS version (I think it was ASUS) but it was a horribly crippled version with no rgb camera.

I've not stayed up to date with kinect/openNI over the last few months, but at the time openNI was far superior to MS SDK as it overed more features. There was work to allow both to be installed simulataniously though I don't know how that progressed.

As to the future its all rumour in my opinion and nothing particularly new, just sounds like they are increasaing hardware resoltuions and/or faster throughout put to allow for higher resolutions to transfer from kinect to pc. So an incremental change. Not sure about the page you linked to from memory neither rgb or depth camera runs as low as 320x240, think min is 640x480 and rgb can go up as high as 1280x960.

Yes you can just buy the sensor and not buy and xbox to go with it...

...however, how can you afford MotionBuilder if an xbox is too expensive?

I imagine you saw the Kinect is coming to the PC right? It's up for pre-order right now for $249.99. (Very cheap for commercial use).

Sweet replies, guys! noisecrime - thanks for clearing stuff up for me and Sirisian, I hadn't noticed that

...however, how can you afford MotionBuilder if an xbox is too expensive?

The software part isn't really something I've thought through yet. TBH I'm just toying with the idea, because it seems intriguing - I don't even have a clue as to how I might use or clean up the animation as commercial 3D packages (like you mentioned) to actually make use of the data are seriously out of my league for personal use. My initial guess would be to look for a freeware pipeline to try things out (as you can probably tell I'm not a professional modeler or 3D artist of any sort), although if a couple of ideas work out and I can get some investment going, the whole shazam might become a whole lot more tenable as an actual setup.

Just curious, but I haven't touched the Kinect SDK for a while now but are there any open source solutions for mocap yet? Even if Rey aren't precise, I can still clean up the motions on my own.

I imagine you saw the Kinect is coming to the PC right? It's up for pre-order right now for $249.99. (Very cheap for commercial use).

lol - just came back to the thread as i'd come across that. Just when I thought MS were getting the message and seemed to be actively supporting the wider community they do this. On the one hand you can't blame them, but on the other thats going to put a massive dent in the number of developers who might want to start kinect development. Not sure what that would equate to in £, but currently kinect is anywhere from £99-£119, which i think is pretty close to the $ price, so if its now £200-£250 thats double the cost for someone who wants to explore its features!

However their justifications make no sense. They claim the cost on xbox is off-set by purchase of kinect games, well wont that be true on PC too? THen there is the fact that kinect is far more cut-down than it was originally going to be and i'm pretty sure it was designed to be profit making from the get go, not like actual consoles which can be loss leading early in the product life.

Anyway unless they stop producing single kinect units for xbox ( can't see that being possible), or they add some secuirty to prevent them being used on PC's, its just easier to buy the xbox version for now to learn the ropes, then any commerical usage buy the full price one.

If they had released the pc version with some hardware updates, offering higher resolutions for the camera's and how to transfer the data fast enough then it might have been a good deal, indeed it could have started a whole second wave of interest in the kinect.

Sadly their current approach just seeems so shortsighted.

Just came across this similar article
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/01/10/waving-not-drowning-pc-kinect-in-feb/#more-88103

It mentions a new 'near mode' via a firmware update, working at 50cm, yet i'm sure the original was working at around 50-80 cm, so either no real change or a minor one. Besides the main issue for using the kinect isn't the closeness, but the fov (for which a company has manufactured a lens kit to aid in that).

However their justifications make no sense. They claim the cost on xbox is off-set by purchase of kinect games, well wont that be true on PC too?

I think the direction they want for the PC kinect is different than the xbox. It probably won't be gaming/entertainment-centric, and in that case, less likely to be subsidized by games.

Anyway unless they stop producing single kinect units for xbox ( can't see that being possible), or they add some secuirty to prevent them being used on PC's, its just easier to buy the xbox version for now to learn the ropes, then any commerical usage buy the full price one.[/quote]See below. The xbox kinect isn't practical for PC uses.

Sadly their current approach just seeems so shortsighted.[/quote]Only time will tell. I think the idea to bring kinect to PC has a lot of potential though and it could end up being brilliant. With 3D monitors coming in our future, I could imagine video chatting in 3D with the depth camera. Or double blinking to double click. Or all kinds of gestures/pointing that make more sense than using keyboard and mouse. Ultimately we won't know what is possible and practical until they open it up to the market, but the idea itself has quite a bit of potential if you think about it.

It mentions a new 'near mode' via a firmware update, working at 50cm, yet i'm sure the original was working at around 50-80 cm, so either no real change or a minor one. Besides the main issue for using the kinect isn't the closeness, but the fov (for which a company has manufactured a lens kit to aid in that).
[/quote]Actually the original didn't work at all in the 50-80cm range. I think the nearest you could be was ~140cm. The depth camera just isn't accurate and also has a strange double-vision as you get close. I did some experimenting with the kinect sdk and always had to move way back in the room to test anything.

Actually the original didn't work at all in the 50-80cm range. I think the nearest you could be was ~140cm. The depth camera just isn't accurate and also has a strange double-vision as you get close. I did some experimenting with the kinect sdk and always had to move way back in the room to test anything.

This I thought kind of sucked. I think you can get an addon that makes it closer, but I got a kinect in part to mess with it for PC use, and I'm kind of worried the stuff I want to try will be too close to the camera now. I'm sure I'll still come up with some intersting things to poke with. I'm still organizing my house after christmas, so I don't know how soon I'll get to mess with it anyway.

Does anyone know if the PC version will also work with a 360? It would be a shame if you couldn't also use the PC version of your kinect with your 360 if you wanted to.

Anyway unless they stop producing single kinect units for xbox ( can't see that being possible), or they add some secuirty to prevent them being used on PC's, its just easier to buy the xbox version for now to learn the ropes, then any commerical usage buy the full price one.[/quote]

There is an official PC SDK released by Microsoft for the Kinect, so I don't see why they would purposefully block it.