PointCloud v2 FAQ

• Kinect for Windows v2 sensor, or Kinect for Xbox One with the separately available USB 3.0 / power adapter (or a supported Orbbec / Intel RealSense sensor)
• Windows 8 / 8.1 / 10 / 11 (the USB stack of Windows 7 and older cannot handle the bandwidth of the v2 sensor and is not supported)
• USB 3.0 port, Intel and Renesas chipsets only (other brands may or may not work)
• DirectX 11 capable GPU (even old ones like an Intel HD4000 or GeForce 610M work)
• 4 GB or more RAM
• Dual core i5/i7 CPU around 3 GHz or faster (slower works but may drop frames)
• 1280x1024 screen (1920x1080 or higher recommended)

The Kinect v2, the Orbbec Astra and Astra Pro, and the Intel RealSense D415, D435 and D455. The Kinect for Xbox One and Kinect for Windows v2 are functionally identical; for PC use the Xbox One version needs the separately sold “Kinect Adapter for Windows”. Microsoft ended Kinect production in 2017, so sensor and adapter are both second-hand only now, and both are usually easy to find on eBay and similar marketplaces.

Not supported: the RealSense 200-series, the SR300 series and the L515. Intel dropped all three from the RealSense SDK that recent versions of the app link against, so what an older build managed is not something this page can promise.

Resolutions, ranges and what is still sold new: depth sensor comparison.

No. Those first-generation sensors are covered by Brekel PointCloud v1. Brekel PointCloud v3 supports both Kinect generations, plus newer sensors.

Yes, PointCloud v2 happily co-exists with the other Brekel apps, and the Kinect v2 sensor uses completely separate drivers from the v1 generation, so nothing interferes.

No. The three sensor technologies use slightly different infrared light frequencies for their depth measurements and can be used together.

These are the chipsets officially supported by the Microsoft drivers; they are proven to handle the high bandwidth requirements robustly. Other brands may work, or may be unstable.

The Microsoft drivers convert the raw infrared stream on the GPU to ensure real-time performance, using DirectX 11 DirectCompute code.

No. Besides the USB and PCI bus bandwidth requirements, there is a Microsoft driver/SDK limitation that prevents access to more than one Kinect v2 sensor per machine. There is no way around this.

Partially. All Brekel apps have a Record Triggering feature that syncs recording between multiple apps on one or more machines, so you can record from several sensors simultaneously. PointCloud v2 does not calibrate or fuse that data into a single pointcloud though. PointCloud v3 does exactly that: aligning and fusing multiple sensors, of mixed brands, across machines.

The v2 sensor measures depth on a different principle (time of flight) with about 3 times the fidelity, producing a unique depth reading per pixel. Data is generally less noisy, and the wider lenses see a bigger area. The v2 app also adds body-based clipping, background subtraction and more output formats.

Microsoft specifies 0.5 to 4.5 meters, which is the figure in the sensor comparison. The sensor does return depth further out, to roughly 8 meters, but nothing guarantees that data. Body detection, used for clipping people from the background, works to about 4.5 meters.

Time of flight measures phase per pixel, so its output resolution really is its measurement resolution. Structured light and stereo work depth out by correlating a pattern or matching a window across several pixels, so neighbouring depth pixels are not independent and a bigger number in a resolution column does not mean more detail in the pointcloud. The longer version, per technology and with the trade-offs going the other way too: how depth sensing works.

The software requires Windows. It has been confirmed to work under Boot Camp on Intel Macs. Virtual machines usually do not work since they lack DirectX 11 and full USB 3.0 support, and Apple Silicon Macs have no Boot Camp.

Yes, see updates and upgrades in the shop.

PointCloud v3 is the current version and in active development: it supports many sensor types (including Kinect v2), can align and fuse multiple sensors, and has more export formats. PointCloud v2 is the cheaper option if a single sensor is all you need. See the PointCloud family overview for a comparison.