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).

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 :)