The Kinect for Windows Team announced that the latest Kinect for Windows runtime and software development kit (SDK) are now available today as well as the availability of the Kinect for Windows sensor in China.

“I look forward to seeing the innovative things Chinese companies do with this voice and gesture technology, as well as the business and societal problems they are able to solve with it,” Craig Eisler, General Manager of Kinect for Windows, said.

The updated SDK includes data from the sensor’s 3-axis accelerometer is now exposed in the API which enables detection of the sensor’s orientation; extended-range depth data now provides details beyond 4 meters; color camera settings, such as brightness and exposure, can now be set explicitly by the application, allowing developers to tune a Kinect for Windows sensor’s environment; the infrared stream is now exposed in the API which means developers can use the infrared stream in many scenarios, such as calibrating other color cameras to the depth sensor or capturing grayscale images in low-light situations; and it allows for faster toggling of IR to support multiple overlapping sensors.

“Access to all this data means new experiences are possible: Whole new scenarios open up, such as monitoring manufacturing processes with extended-range depth data,” Eisler said in a post.

“Building solutions that work in low-light settings becomes a reality with IR stream exposure, such as in theaters and light-controlled museums. And developers can tailor applications to work in different environments with the numerous color camera settings, which enhance an application’s ability to work perfectly for end users.”

The SDK also ships with a German speech recognition language pack that has been optimized for the sensor’s microphone, and skeletal tracking is also now supported on multiple sensors within a single application and it is greatly compatible with the Windows 8 operating system.

As developers and business leaders see the huge potential of using natural user interface capabilities of Kinect for Windows for commercial use, the Kinect for Windows 8 team will do their best to do all the “heavy lifting” so technologists can focus on developing for the platform as well as making specific solutions.

The Kinect for Windows sensor is now available in 32 countries and in the next few months, it will be available in seven more markets: Chile, Colombia, the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Poland, and Puerto Rico.  The sensor is available for $249 but the SDK is available for free.  The sensor connects to a PC, instead of the Xbox 360,  via a USB cable.