I've mentioned that with the Kinect for Windows v2 SDK you can now create Windows Store apps, Kinect to Windows Store App development. Recently the Kinect Team highlighted three real world examples of this...
In case you hadn't noticed, the Windows Store added something really special to its line-up not too long ago: its first Kinect applications. The ability to create Windows Store applications had been a longstanding request from the Kinect for Windows developer community, so we were very pleased to deliver this capability through the latest Kinect sensor and the public release of the Kinect for Windows software development kit (SDK) 2.0.
The ability to sell Kinect solutions through the Windows Store means that developers can reach a broad and heretofore untapped market of businesses and consumers, including those with an existing Kinect for Xbox One sensor and the Kinect Adapter for Windows. Here is a look at three of the first developers to have released Kinect apps to the Windows Store.
Nayi Disha – getting kids moving and learning
You wouldn’t think that Nayi Disha needs to broaden its market—the company’s innovative, Kinect-powered early education software is already in dozens of preschools and elementary schools in India and the United States. But Nayi Disha co-founder Kartik Aneja is a man on a mission: to bring Nayi Disha’s educational software to as many young learners as possible. “The Windows Store gives us an opportunity to reach beyond the institutional market and into the home market. What parent doesn’t want to help their child learn?” asks Aneja, somewhat rhetorically. In addition, deployment in the Windows Store could help Nayi Disha reach schools and daycare centers beyond those in the United States and India.
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YAKiT: bringing animation to the masses
It doesn’t take much to get Kyle Kesterson yakking about YAKiT—the co-founder and CEO of the Seattle-based Freak’n Genius is justifiably proud of what his company has accomplished in fewer than three years. “We started with the idea of enabling anybody to create animated cartoons,” he explains. But then reality set in. “We had smart, creative, funny people,” he says, “but we didn’t have the technology that would allow an untrained person to make a fully animated cartoon. We came up with a really neat first product, which let users animate the mouth of a still photo, but it wasn’t the full-blown animation we had set our sights on.”
Then something wonderful happened. Freak’n Genius was accepted into a startup incubation program funded by Microsoft’s Kinect for Windows group, and the funny, creative people at YAKiT began working with the developer preview version of the Kinect v2 sensor.
Now, Freak’n Genius is poised to achieve its founders’ original mission: bringing the magic of full animation to just about anyone. Its Kinect-based technology takes what has been highly technical, time consuming, and expensive and makes it instant, free, and fun. The user simply chooses an on-screen character and animates it by standing in front of the Kinect v2 sensor and moving. With its precise skeletal tracking capabilities, the v2 sensor captures the “animator’s” every twitch, jump, and gesture, translating them into movements of the on-screen character. What’s more, with the ability to create Windows Store apps, Kinect v2 stands to bring Freak’n Genius’s full animation applications to countless new customers.
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3D Builder: commoditizing 3D printing
As any tech-savvy person knows, 3D printing holds enormous potential—from industry (think small-batch manufacturing) to medicine (imagine “bio-printing” of body parts) to agriculture (consider bio-printed beef). Not to mention its rapid emergence as source of home entertainment and amusement, as in the printing of 3D toys, gadgets, and gimcracks. It was with these capabilities in mind that, last year, Microsoft introduced the 3D Builder app, which allows users to make 3D prints easily from a Windows 8.1 PC.
Now, 3D Builder has taken things to the next level with the incorporation of the Kinect v2 sensor. “The v2 sensor generates gorgeous 3D meshes from the world around you,” says Kris Iverson, a principal software engineer in the Windows 3D Printing group. “It not only provides precise depth information, it captures full-color images of people, pets, and even entire rooms. And it scans in real scale, which can then be adjusted for output on a 3D printer.”
Nayi Disha, YAKiT, and 3D Builder represent just a thin slice of the potential for Kinect apps in the Windows Store. Whether the apps are educational, entertainment, or tools, as in these three vignettes, or intended for healthcare, manufacturing, retailing, or other purposes, Kinect v2 and the Windows Store offer a new world of opportunity for both developers and users.
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