It's been a long time since the Kinect was just for gamers. The hacker community quickly embraced the device, modding it for projects from the quirky to the industrial. And then Microsoft also embraced the hacker community. Now, the software giant is offering a free Kinect for Windows software developer kit, which became available today and features both a real-time 3-D scanner and a model gestural user interface.

Bob Heddle, director of Kinect for Windows, announced and demoed the kit Saturday at Engadget's Expand conference. But although the two products, Fusion and Interactions, were impressive on stage, they're less consumer tools and more a platform to build off of, he explains.

"These are tools for developers and businesses to then build into applications for them to deploy," says Heddle. "It's a fundamental technology that makes Kinect useable in that space, for the developers to really turn it into something for users."

Fusion uses the Kinect to scan and model objects in real time. To show it off, senior program manager Chris White circled Engadget editor-in-chief Tim Stevens with a Windows Kinect, while an on-screen model formed from the frame-by-frame data, as compiled by the computer's graphics card. Because it's real-time, the user can see which parts of the model need more data, and wave the Kinect over the according locations. It also recognizes scanned objects when they move; that is, if something the Kinect is recording changes places, it can recognize that it moved as a unit, and thus defines that unit as a single object. The result can be exported as .stl or .obj files.

"Basically, there are these blocks that we're tiling space with, and then keeping track of some information per block," says White. The smaller the object, the finer the blocks and the more detailed the model can be.

Heddle and White expect the tool to find use in stores where consumers will model their bodies and buy custom clothing, and also as a way to import industrial designs. But that's the developers' job to make it happen.

"People had interest in this technology, and we had algorithms, and we said let's make it available," says Heddle. "It demonstrates the best practices for how to use it, that people can then take those components and reconfigure it how they want."

A rendering from Kinect Fusion, next to a still from the camera. Image: Courtesy of Microsoft

Kinect and Leap Motion, a gesture control device that is available on pre-order, represent some of the first serious forays into touch-free gestural interface.

"Touch-free interactions is going to be a transformative change to user interfaces in the future," says Heddle, while adding that "the current sensor and platform we have is really not consumer ready."

That's not to say there's no possibility of more polished Kinect-based products from Microsoft. Interactions, the gestural interface released with the SDK, recognizes the user, allows him to grab, scroll, pan, and even fling files he's interacting with. (And yes, they thought of the Tom Cruise problem. You can leave your arms comfortably at your sides, says White.)

"It maps really closely to a touch interface," says Heddle. "There's X-Y position, there's tap to select, and pan, and inertial scroll. We believe touch is also very natural, we should be able to use touch where it makes sense, and touch-free when you want to untether from the computer."

The Kinect team wanted a basic UI for developers to start with, so they didn't have to spend time reinvent one. Fusion and Interactions are sample apps to give developers a starting point, though Heddle notes they're entirely reconfigurable.

"We saw so much innovation and creativity when we just made this stuff available," says Heddle. "I bet the most interesting one is probably more related to 3-D printers or some area we haven't thought of."