Microsoft: Kinect for Windows 1.5 software due in late May

It's been close to two months since Microsoft first launched the Kinect for Windows device, along with the 1.0 version of its SDK. This week, Microsoft announced that the 1.5 version of the SDK would be released sometime in late May with a number of new features and improvements.

Among the new additions will be Kinect Studio. Microsoft says it will help Kinect software developers by recording and playing back clips of people who are using the applications they are making for the device. It will also add what Microsoft is calling 10-joint skeletal tracking and it will allow Kinect for Windows apps to track the head, neck and arms of a user if he or she is standing up or sitting down.

The 1.5 SDK will include support for four new spoken languages, French, Spanish, Italian, and Japanese. It will also support some specific dialects for the Kinect voice recognition features such as how residents in the UK and Ireland speak English or how Canadians speak French.

Microsoft also announced that Kinect for Windows will be available for sale in late May in Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan. It will expand to even more countries in June, including Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, Finland, India, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates.