Kinect emulation w/o actual device plugged

Question

Is it possible to emulate Kinect sensor (for usage with Kinect SDK), when the Kinect itself isn't plugged?

First I thought Kinect Studio does exactly what I wanted, but now it seems like Kinect Studio records data streams and can "feed" them to application, but is unable to emulate connection to the sensor. So at the moment I have a couple of .xed files recorded with Kinect Studio and I can't launch any Kinect-enabled apps without getting "Kinect sensor is not plugged in" or whatever message.

Is there any way around this? I have access to Kinect, but it's not at the same place I intend to write most of the code (and where I would very much like to run/debug it with recorded data)..

I would really appreciate any help.

P.S. Maybe I'm just using Kinect Studio somehow wrong and it actually can emulate Kinect connection (this is the best-case scenario, actually).

Shelburne

Have a look here, to see if Kinect Studio will accomplish what you need: msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/jj650892.aspx – Tinkle

@evil-closet-monkey As I said, I wasn't able to make Kinect Studio actually work without Kinect connected. It plays recorded files just fine, but example Kinect apps can't see Kinece device and therefore won't start. – Shelburne

I've seen this before, but I don't think it is a general purpose emulator. kinesis.io/blog/kinect-simulator-by-kinesis I'm still glancing around, but haven't found something that is an obvious solution. – Tinkle

@evil-closet-monkey Unfortunately, it isn't genereal purpose at all. It wasn't able to stop messages "Kinect required" from apps and Kinect Studio still has no options but to start with "Stay Disconnected" flag. Thanks for the effort anyway! – Shelburne

@Shelburne I'm not sure you can, at least not w/ Microsoft SDK. I'd once asked if I could convert pixels to depth offline and was told that there wasn't a way to pull conversion info. w/o an actual sensor. Might be a similar problem here. – Jimjimdandy

Anyway, I found it easier to dump necessary data to a file myself and then read it when it's needed. That is actually simple enough and makes debugging apps quite convenient. – Shelburne

@Shelburne I did the same thing, dumped the skeleton stream into a file as a sequence of JSON encoded strings and then read them back in a loop for debugging. – Clog

Answer 1

You need to feed the NUI driver with your recorded data to do that.

NUI-Natural User Interface - this thingy is what gets input from Kinect and give output of the skeletal mapping.

If I remember correct - you are in luck as NUI is open-source.. Search for OPEN-NI.

What you ask for is definitely possible but to get into the bits and bytes you will have to invest quite some time to be part of the Open-Ni community, this is not something that can be learned on the fly in a day or two.

And back to your question - Yes, it is possible to make the Kinect studio "think" there is a Kinect connected if you tinker with the driver. Have I tried it myself? no :)

Cohleen