Everybody wave!

And for free!

The Kinect software development kit (SDK) is now available for PC users to create their own applications for Kinect.

Here's the official description straight from Microsoft. To start creating your own Kinect applications, download the Kinect SDK here. If you manage to create something cool, be sure to show it off to us!

The Kinect for Windows SDK beta is a programming toolkit for application developers. It enables the academic and enthusiast communities easy access to the capabilities offered by the Microsoft Kinect device connected to computers running the Windows 7 operating system.

The Kinect for Windows SDK beta includes drivers, rich APIs for raw sensor streams and human motion tracking, installation documents, and resource materials. It provides Kinect capabilities to developers who build applications with C++, C#, or Visual Basic by using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010.

This SDK includes the following features:

Raw sensor streams
Access to raw data streams from the depth sensor, color camera sensor, and four-element microphone array enables developers to build upon the low-level streams that are generated by the Kinect sensor.
Skeletal tracking
The capability to track the skeleton image of one or two people moving within the Kinect field of view make it easy to create gesture-driven applications.
Advanced audio capabilities
Audio processing capabilities include sophisticated acoustic noise suppression and echo cancellation, beam formation to identify the current sound source, and integration with the Windows speech recognition API.
Sample code and documentation
The SDK includes more than 100 pages of technical documentation. In addition to built-in help files, the documentation includes detailed walkthroughs for most samples provided with the SDK.
Easy installation
The SDK installs quickly, requires no complex configuration, and the complete installer size is less than 100 MB. Developers can get up and running in just a few minutes with a standard standalone Kinect sensor unit (widely available at retail outlets).
This SDK is designed for non-commercial purposes only; a commercial version is expected to be available at a later date.

Shape Game Demo
This is a demo of the Shape Game sample application, which is included in the Kinect for Windows SDK beta. This sample displays the tracked skeletons of two players together with shapes falling from the sky. Players can control the shapes by moving and speaking commands.