Microsoft made available for download version 1.8 of its Kinect for Windows software development kit (SDK) on September 17.

According to a new blog post announcing the update, version 1.8 is the fourth update to the SDK since Microsoft first made it available commercially a year and a half ago. To date, there have been 700,000 downloads of the Kinect for Windows SDK, officials said.

The updated SDK is available here.

New features in SDK 1.8 include:

New background removal. An API removes the background behind the active user so that it can be replaced with an artificial background.

A new Kinect Fusion API for more realistic color capture. This can help with full color 3D printing or creation of 3D assets for games, CAD and other apps. (Microsoft Research's Kinect Fusion technology allows for 3-D renderings of people and objects.)

Improved tracking robustness with Kinect Fusion.

New HTML interaction sample for those using HTML5 and JavaScript to build Kinect-enabled user interfaces

Multiple-sensor Kinect Fusion sample

Adaptive UI sample

Microsoft made version 1.7 of the Kinect for Windows SDK available to developers in March 2013.

The Kinect for Windows sensor looks like the Kinect for Xbox sensor. But it is designed to work at closer range and to work with Windows 7/8 PCs. In addition to making firmware adjustments in the new Windows Kinect sensor, Microsoft shortened the the USB cable and included a “small dongle” to improve coexistence with other USB peripherals. The Windows version also modified the Kinect depth camera to see objects that are “as close as 50 centimeters in front of the device.

The Kinect for Windows software development kit (SDK) and runtime are available under both a commercial license and a hobbyist license, allowing developers to create commercial/business applications that make use of the product.