I would argue that you don't need different hardware to see "closer" to the sensors - probably just recalibrated hardware and altered focusing systems dressed up as new hardware to justify the price increase. Would be interested in an iFixIt teardown for confirmation, though.
I suspect the lens that diverges the laser projected pattern would need to be adjusted in order to get the proper sized pattern at the optimal distance. i.e. The lens would need to be more diverging.
"As I mentioned in the original post, the Kinect for Windows device has new firmware which enables the depth camera to see objects as close as 50 centimeters in front of the device without losing accuracy or precision... The lenses on the Kinect for Windows sensor are the same as the Kinect for Xbox 360 sensor, so near mode does not change the field of view as some people have been speculating."
Right. Altered, reconfigured, calibrated differently, etc. but not actually different hardware. It's a different lens, not a different lens system, for instance.
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I would argue that you don't need different hardware to see "closer" to the sensors - probably just recalibrated hardware and altered focusing systems dressed up as new hardware to justify the price increase. Would be interested in an iFixIt teardown for confirmation, though.
I suspect the lens that diverges the laser projected pattern would need to be adjusted in order to get the proper sized pattern at the optimal distance. i.e. The lens would need to be more diverging.
This is discussed on the Kinect blog here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/kinectforwindows/archive/2012/01/20/...
"As I mentioned in the original post, the Kinect for Windows device has new firmware which enables the depth camera to see objects as close as 50 centimeters in front of the device without losing accuracy or precision... The lenses on the Kinect for Windows sensor are the same as the Kinect for Xbox 360 sensor, so near mode does not change the field of view as some people have been speculating."
Right. Altered, reconfigured, calibrated differently, etc. but not actually different hardware. It's a different lens, not a different lens system, for instance.
No, I think the hardware is exactly the same. There's a firmware update.