Beginning Kinect Programming: With the Kinect for Windows V2 SDK

The Kinect is the original and most popular motion sensing input device for computers and game consoles, enabling natural user interaction through gestures and speech. Beginning Kinect Programming is an ideal introduction to developing apps that understand and use these exciting capabilities, ranging from depth sensing and motion tracking to speech recognition, digital art and 3D scanning, with the next generation Kinect for Windows v2 sensor and SDK. The book starts by taking you through fundamentals of Kinect programming as you set up your development environment and build your first working Kinect application. The v2 sensor includes higher definition full color video, better depth image processing and more sophisticated skeleton tracking, all of which you'll be introduced to in guided code walkthroughs for maximum accessibility. Audio processing is next as the author takes you through examples of programming speech recognition with Kinect. Also included is a useful introduction to using C++ alongside your C# code for maximum speed and power in particle interactions. The final chapters of the book dive into some exciting and imaginative ways to interact with your Kinect, featuring digital art, 3D avatar creation for Unity3D, scanning 3D objects with Kinect, and computer vision. Invest in the future of human-computer interaction and have fun along the way, with Beginning Kinect Programming: with the Kinect for Windows v2 SDK. What you'll learn Build your first working Kinect program with the Kinect for Windows v2 sensor and SDK. Understand and process color and depth data from the Kinect's data streams. Interact with the Kinect v2's sophisticated body tracking API. Build an app that recognizes spoken commands. Create 3D gaming avatars with Kinect and Unity3D. Be inspired by what the next generation Kinect v2 sensor can do. Who this book is for Beginning Kinect Programming is for C# developers who want to learn how to program natural user interactions with computers, using the revolutionary Kinect device as their computer's eyes and ears. Familiarity with a XAML-based platform such as WPF is useful but not essential as full code walkthroughs are given. Guided coding examples use the free Express edition of Visual Studio 2013 running on Windows 8.