???? – 2023murdered
BuzzFeed News
“It won a Pulitzer, then the budget meeting happened.”
“It saw you whole — all 360 degrees and seven microphones of you.”
The Azure Kinect DK was Microsoft's developer kit for giving computers eyes and ears: a 12-megapixel RGB camera paired with a depth sensor for body tracking, a seven-microphone array, and a direct line to Azure's cloud and AI services. Announced in Barcelona at MWC in February 2019, it was the successor to the Kinect line — but this time pointed away from the living room and toward logistics, robotics, health care, a
Released in the US in March 2020, it quietly departed the stage in 2023, remembered as a tool rather than a toy. It carried the Kinect name into workshops and labs where the original only ever dreamed of going. What it left behind is the developers' work — the applications, the capture rigs, and the proof that a sensor can love you back in point clouds.
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“It won a Pulitzer, then the budget meeting happened.”
“He ran through every level; the servers just stopped running with him.”
“It told a generation they were the coolest kid in school. Rest easy, flame emoji.”