Microsoft now lets you easily use Kinect as a webcam

Microsoft today announced a few updates related to its Kinect sensor.

For one thing, the company said that it has followed through on its promise to expose RGB, depth, and infrared data from the Kinect for third-party Universal Windows Platform (UWP) applications to use, with the launch of a new Kinect driver for Windows 10.

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But the new driver also makes it possible for end users to easily set up the Kinect to function as a simple webcam. There were other ways to do this, including code in the Kinect for Windows software development kit (SDK) beta 2, but now it’s as easy as opening Device Manager on a Windows 10 machine and locating the driver under the “Kinect sensor devices” folder. You’ll be able to use the Kinect to make Skype video calls, and you can configure the Kinect to perform Windows Hello biometric authentication through face recognition, Microsoft’s Yin Li wrote in a blog post.

With the release of the Xbox Summer Update in July, Microsoft also enhanced the Kinect’s capability for developers. “Apps that use the Kinect sensor’s RGB, infrared, and/or depth cameras will run on Xbox with same code, and Xbox can also use the Kinect RGB camera as a normal webcam for Skype-like scenarios,” Li wrote.