List of items to help you get started with teaching C++ using the Kinect

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Yeech.  C++.

After nearly 20 years of advancement in software development, C++ is returning.  Sort of like that old girlfriend (or boyfriend, your choice) that you dumped years ago, now you are divorced, and you run into her (him) at Starbucks.  She/he looks just the same as they did 20 years ago.  That’s the problem, you don’t.  Still the beauty of simplicity combined with unnecessary complications, but she (he) listens and understands your needs and desires.

Well WTF.

Let’s dig in, accept that C++ won the battle, war and isn’t all that hard to learn, get  back up to speed, and so forth.

Start with the Kinect, at least you can have some fun and maybe learn enough C++ to get ready for Win8, use that POS “Next Step” software (if you get that, then you know what I mean), and so forth.

Get a Kinect, if you have to buy one, get a Windows Kinect, not the XBox 360, which is cheaper and generally the same hardware, in the future you may lose support for that device.  No Whining, please, I know that it doesn’t make sense, all I can say is: “Sorry”.  There are a number of reasons on the web, are these explanations the truth?  I have no idea.

Think about this question Scott Kerfoot ask me: “Are there any games for Windows Kinect?”  And I said: “Of Course there are!”  He said: “Prove it!”  And I couldn’t, there are none.  So here is a market!

Download and install the most recent Kinect SDK:

To get a quickstart, don’t confuse this with the Coding4Fun toolkit, you need this for the C++ material:

Coding4Fun toolkit (dll’s no directly usable code, very useful):

To see what others are doing, but much of the material is for the older research SDK, so be careful:

If you want to experiment with XNA and Kinect:(Freaking awesome but mildly outdated material)

But seriously get everything downloaded from the Quickstart and we will tear apart the skeletal Tracking program. If you are getting ready for the Windows 8 world, pretty much the Skeletal Tracking using C++ is your baby.  It uses DirectX and C++, not Windows 8, it uses Windows 7.