Saturday, June 18, 2011

Microsoft SDK and OpenNI Drivers - Do they work together



Be part of the movement. Nice tag line. But looks like there is gonna be no movement around here. The non-commercial agreement you make when you install the Microsoft Kinect SDK does not allow you to use it any business even though you don't make money out of it. Check this link out. things-you-cant-do-with-the-microsoft-kinect-sdk.

So back to the topic on the title. OpenNI and the Kinect SDK. Will they work together, I mean will they work side by side. I guess not, yet. I installed the Microsoft Kinect SDK today and guess what, my OpenNI drivers stopped working, how convenient. Now I can't run the game I made with OpenNI and Unity3D. So I guess I'll just uninstall the official drivers for now, but not before I play around with the SDK it and get to see what it can do.

You'll probably be thinking right now why the hell would I go back to OpenNI drivers when the guys who made the device released there drivers. Guess..
Well I knew you'd guess wrong! No, its not because of the commercial license thingy. Its just cuz its not as compatible. Well it has its advantages which OpenNI doesn't have like very (and I mean very) easy motor control and good audio support(though I didn't try it yet). BUT its doesn't do a thing more that skeletal tracking.

The NITE software from OpenNI gives you much more with gesture recognition and stuff. And plus they have a NITE wrapper for Unity3D. How cool is that!! I managed to make a game within a few days with the Kinect. You must be wondering Microsoft has XNA and there must be someway to get Kinect working with XNA. Well there isn't a way yet. At least not an easy way. Some guy at Microsoft got the SDK running with XNA but supposedly he had to jump through a few hoops to get it up and running. Anybody out there with a solution please post it somewhere.

Well Id say it was easy to program in C sharp with the SDK but until they don't give me support with a good graphics engine, Im hanging around with OpenNI for now.

To try out the SDK just download from here. Download link for the SDK