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The XBOX 360 Kinect motion tracking device has been a huge hit, especially with the modding community, who have got it to do things that Microsoft never envisaged for it. This appears to have paid off, because in an MSDN blog, Microsoft announced that in 2012, they will launch a version tailor made for a Windows PC. It's very much the same as the 360 version, except for things like firmware adjustments, a shorter USB cable for greater signal reliability and a small dongle to "improve coexistence with other USB peripherals". For developers, the new firmware "enables the depth camera to see objects as close as 50 centimeters in front of the device without losing accuracy or precision, with graceful degradation down to 40 centimeters." Also, the Software Development Kit (SDK) has seen numerous upgrades. There's significant interest from businesses too, so Microsoft "are proud to be helping those companies to explore the profound implications NUI has for the future." Finally, the Kinect Accelerator incubation project run by Microsoft BizSpark will be giving 10 tech-oriented companies $20,000 to explore innovative new ways of using Kinect. Applications close on January 25th, 2012. Official forum: General Discussion-Kinect for Windows SDK



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