PointCloud v3 FAQ

This depends on the amount and type of sensors you want to use. You can find more info in the documentation included with the app. The easiest way to check whether your machine handles your sensor setup is to run the free trial.

Yes, definitely, the app was designed to handle data from different sensor types. Combining different sensor types can even be beneficial, since they all have different noise and accuracy characteristics in the pointcloud data they deliver.

If you want to buy new, the Orbbec Femto Bolt is the practical answer: it uses the same depth technology as the Azure Kinect and is its closest current equivalent. Which of the others are still sold, and how they compare on resolution, field of view and range: depth sensor comparison, which also says what I would pick per job.

On quality, “best” is a subjective term and it depends. Azure Kinect provides the cleanest pointcloud and supports hardware synchronization. Kinect v2 provides very good pointclouds but is restricted to one sensor per machine (due to drivers/SDK) and has no hardware sync. Kinect v1 and Orbbec produce decent data with low compute requirements but can interfere with each other. RealSense has high resolution and framerate options but is generally very noisy.

Also note that depending on the underlying depth sensing technology not all sensors produce a unique depth reading per pixel (time of flight sensors generally do), so resolution numbers can be misleading. That is worth understanding before you buy on a spec sheet: how depth sensing works.

The software works with one or more sensors, as many as your hardware can handle. Additional sensors with different viewpoints can increase quality, because they see parts that are occluded for another sensor. So basically the more the merrier.

This depends on the USB bandwidth of your machine, the type of sensors, and your CPU/GPU. Kinect v2 (Xbox One) sensors have driver/SDK limitations restricting them to a single sensor per machine. For desktop machines you can add PCI-Express cards to expand USB bandwidth. You can also use additional machines with a network connection and use the sensors connected to them. See the documentation for more information.

Kinect v2 (Xbox One) has a driver/SDK limitation that prevents access to more than a single sensor per machine; there is no way around this. The reverse-engineered open source LibFreenect2 SDK could potentially access color/pointcloud data on some hardware setups, but its installation is finicky and its speed/efficiency lower than the official drivers, so it is not supported.

Generally speaking multiple sensors are always preferable, since they see more angles of the subject and have fewer occlusions. And newer sensor types almost always provide better, cleaner data than older ones, especially in the Kinect sensor range. Your particular setup I have most likely not tested, so if you need a more specific answer, test it with the trial and/or evaluation license.

No. One Multi Sensor license lets you connect as many sensors and machines as you want. When using multiple machines, the idea is to run the GUI on one machine and the headless/console version of the same app on your other machines, then use the Network Sensor option to receive data from the sensors on those machines.

Yes and no. Structured light sensors (like Kinect v1 and Orbbec Astra) can produce a bit more noise in overlapping areas. Kinect v2 (time of flight) can occasionally show some Z-wobble since those sensors cannot be synchronized. Azure Kinect can be synchronized fully, reducing any interference. Stereo sensors (like the Intel RealSense D400 series) generally don’t interfere at all.

Azure Kinect sensors have sync in/out ports on their backs (remove the cover) and can be daisy-chained using a simple 3.5mm audio jack cable. The app automatically detects this and sets things up accordingly. Internally the software synchronizes all incoming data using timestamps.

v3 supports a wider set of sensors, and new sensor types/brands can be added in the future. It supports aligning and fusing data from multiple sensors, which can improve quality with occlusions and/or increase the capture volume, depending on your setup. It has more output file format options, and it is in active development. See the PointCloud family overview for a comparison.

Yes, of course. You can find more info about updates and upgrades in the shop.

Data quality depends on how many sensors you use, their brand/type, and how you set them up regarding angle and distance to the subject. Due to these variances it’s best to try things out yourself for your particular setup, using the trial.

By default Body v3 is tuned for best body tracking performance and uses infrared streams where possible, as decoding those is generally faster than color streams and offers more stable lighting. You can switch to color using the top menu: Settings > Force using Color for video.

Many of the supported sensors don’t come with macOS drivers. On top of that, Apple dropped OpenGL support in favor of a proprietary substitute, doesn’t offer cross-compilation or NVIDIA CUDA support, requires a paid development subscription, and moved away from x86/x64 CPUs. Porting would mean rewriting major portions of the app for a very small user base, so there are currently no plans for a macOS release.

Some sensors offer Linux drivers and some portions of the app could potentially be ported to Linux. At the moment there are no plans, but that may change in the future if there is enough demand.