From what I understand, an IR pattern is projected on to the room and the cameras pick it up. The level of distortion in the pattern shows how far the object is

From what I understand, an IR pattern is projected on to the room and the cameras pick it up. The level of distortion in the pattern shows how far the object is. NOT Lidar. Probably a laser projector though. The tech is nice, and it's nice that it's bundled up in one affordable package, but the real power in Kinect is in the software. Right now all that the drivers return is raw video and depth. It's what you do with that data that counts.