I'd love to try this, but the all-Microsoft stack required to use this SDK is a huge barrier to entry. I use a Mac, I don't know C#, Silverlight, Visual studio etc. In order to use this SDK I need to buy into MS tech on many levels. A browser plugin with a JavaScript API (even if IE only), would be very compelling and a lot more accessible.
...neither of which is really the point. Even if they both gave you free hardware, you've got to learn their technology stack just to try it out. Unlike, say, web development, where a few seconds of text editing gives you a "hello world" that will work on any platform.
I bought the Kinect. I'll use it as I see fit. Is that not a sale?
The previous poster's point was that the open source software allows one to use the Kinect in a cross-platform, standards-compliant setting. Microsoft's coming out with something half as featureful, with serious platform restrictions. Their SDK's only advantages are "officialness" and a more complete audio API.
>they both gave you free hardware, you've got to learn their technology stack just to try it out
They don't, and there are lot of people, especially worldwide where Macs are less common and are much more expensive. Learning something is an investment of your free time, whereas hardware needs cold cash. Not exactly equivalent or comparable especially when not in the first world.
>Applications that are built with this SDK Beta must run in a native Windows environment. You cannot run applications in a virtual machine, because the Microsoft Kinect drivers and this SDK Beta must be installed on the computer that is running the application.
You sound like a web dev, which is fair enough, but isn't Microsoft busy (for varying values of busy) trying to promote native technologies and discourage the browser as a platform view for obvious business reasons?
I am. And Microsoft also recently announced that Windows 8 UI's are HTML5/JS, and yet here they go and release a brand new Silverlight/C# API. This is one very confused company.
