Microsoft's upcoming official PC SDK for its Kinect 3D camera will include access to automatic skeleton tracking and use of the unit's directional microphone, the company revealed today. Microsoft announced the upcoming availability of a free official Kinect SDK for PC hobbyists and academics in February, but provided few details on just how much access users would have to the depth-sensing hardware. But new information posted on the Microsoft Research site promises the SDK will include access to automatically detected skeleton models for up to two players, as well as use of the unit's directional noise-cancelling four-microphone array and integration with Microsoft's speech recognition API. These are key features that are missing from most unofficial hacked drivers that allow the Kinect to interact with a PC, as well as the open set of drivers released by Kinect hardware maker PrimeSense. Microsoft says the SDK beta will be available this Spring, but a MIX11 report from the I, Programmer blog mentions a potential May 16 release. Microsoft Research recently detailed how a machine-learning process that allows the Kinect to quickly detect player skeletons from complex depth-map data based on an pre-analysis of millions of images.
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