kinect + avatars

[tobin]

Thanks for the comments about the MS Research SDK. The lead developer of the FAAST project, Evan Suma, offers the summary below of the pros and cons of the MS Research SDK and the OpenNI SDK (note that FAAST currently uses OpenNI but will soon add support for MS Research SDK thus giving users the ability to choose):

"OpenNI advantages:
- More accurate and robust for arm/leg pose.
- Better depth map resolution (always 640x480). When the skeleton tracker is activated with Microsoft, the depth map drops to 320x240.
- More permissive license that allows corporate use. The Microsoft SDK can only be used for research and noncommercial purposes.
- More stable. The Microsoft SDK is a little more buggy and unstable, and crashes for me every now and then.

Microsoft advantages:
- No calibration required. However, the word from PrimeSense is that they are very close to solving the calibration issue, and hopefully soon OpenNI will no longer require the calibration pose at all.
- More skeleton joints. With Microsoft you get an articulated neck joint, which is rigid with OpenNI. You also get the wrist and ankle joints, but in my experience these don't work very well.
- More sophisticated built-in filtering (to reduce noise and jitter).
"