Depth Sensors Comparison

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Depth Sensors Support

iPi Recorder supports the following depth sensors:

Orbbec Femto Bolt
Azure Kinect (Kinect for Azure)
Kinect 2 (Kinect for XBOX One)
Intel RealSense L515
Intel RealSense D455
Orbbec Astra (PRO)

As to modern depth sensors, Azure Kinect and Orbbec Femto Bolt/Mega sensors are the best choice for full body motion capture, while MS Kinect 2 (Kinect for XBOX One) sensor is also good enough. The quality and accuracy of depth maps from Orbbec Femto Bolt/Mega, Azure Kinects and MS Kinects 2 are the best in market.

Microsoft Kinect for Windows
ASUS Xtion Live
ASUS Xtion
PrimeSense Carmine 1.08

First generation depth sensors are almost outdated but still usable. For example, Orbbec Astra (PRO) has totally the same depth quality and resolution as these outdated sensors. For this reason you can use for example MS Kinect v1 sensor(s) and get exactly the same results as with Orbbec Astra sensor(s). If needed you can find more information about these sensors in documentation for previous version of iPi Motion Capture.

Intel RealSense D415 and D435
ASUS Xtion 2


Comparison

Main features of depth sensors:

Place Sensor Price (approx) Technology Depth FOV (vertical) Depth Resolution Depth FPS Interface Multiple Sensors per single PC External Power Supply Tripod Mount Example
1 Azure Kinect $400 Time-of-Flight NFOV: 65°
WFOV: 120° 		NFOV: 640x576 (very good quality!)
WFOV: 512x512 		30 USB 3.0 yes optional yes (1/4″) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
2 Orbbec Femto Bolt $400 Time-of-Flight NFOV: 65°
WFOV: 120° 		NFOV: 640x576 (good quality)
WFOV: 512x512 		30 USB 3.0 yes optional yes (1/4″)
3 Kinect 2 (Kinect for XBOX One) $160 Time-of-Flight 60° 512x424 (good quality) 30 USB 3.0 yes required yes (1/4″) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
4 Intel RealSense L515 $350 Time-of-Flight 55° up to 1024x768 30 USB 3.0 yes not required yes (1/4″) 1
5 Intel RealSense D455 $240 Infrared Coded Structured Light combined with stereo RGB matching 57° up to 1280x720 (but noisy!) up to 90 USB 3.0 yes not required yes (1/4″) 1
6 First-gen depth sensors from $30 Infrared Coded Structured Light 45° 640x480 (interpolated, actual: 320x240 or even less) 30 USB 2.0 yes not required (except Kinect v1) no 1, 2, 3, 4
7 Orbbec Astra (PRO) $160 Infrared Coded Structured Light 45° 640x480 (interpolated, actual: 320x240 or even less) 30 USB 2.0 yes not required yes (M6 not 1/4″)
8 Intel RealSense D435 $180 Infrared Coded Structured Light combined with stereo RGB matching 65.5° (only 42° for RGB) up to 1280x720 (but very noisy, inaccurate and with a lot of artifacts like waves and blur!) up to 90 USB 3.0 yes not required yes (1/4″)
9 ASUS Xtion 2 $270 Time-of-Flight 52° (can be mounted in vertical position for 74°) 640x480 (interpolated: actual is less than 320x240) 30 USB 3.0 yes not required yes (1/4″, dual at bottom and side)

Major Pros and Cons of depth sensors:

Place Sensor Pros Cons
1 Azure Kinect
  • The highest FOV (especially in WFOV mode)
  • High resolution of depth and RGB video
  • Low noise, the best quality and accuracy of point cloud
  • The highest overall tracking and calibration quality can be expected
  • Good feet tracking
  • Low mutual sensors interference
  • More tolerant to lighting conditions
  • Supports external synchronization (for ideal sync of multiple devices)
  • Has settings for RGB camera (calibration video can be recorded in light room)
  • Multiple sensors can be connected to one and the same computer
  • Has mount for tripod
  • High price
  • Short USB-cables (use active USB 3.0 repeaters to overcome this drawback)
  • Doesn't like certain fabrics (e.g. shiny)
  • Requires USB 3.0 controller
  • Requires Windows 10 64-bit (doesn't work in Windows 7, 8 and 8.1)
  • Out of stocks
2 Orbbec Femto Bolt
  • Mostly the same as Azure Kinect
  • High price
  • Poor overlapping between color and depth images in WFOV depth modes
  • Doesn't like certain fabrics (e.g. shiny)
  • Orbbec SDK is not stable enough, and still has some bugs and issues
3 Kinect 2 (Kinect for XBOX One)
  • Good-enough FOV
  • Relatively high resolution of depth and RGB video
  • Low noise, good-enough quality and accuracy of point cloud
  • High overall tracking quality can be expected
  • Good-enough feet tracking
  • Low mutual sensors interference
  • Rather tolerant to lighting conditions
  • Has mount for tripod
  • Sensor itself is rather bulky
  • There's no settings for RGB camera like Exposition and Gain (thus, for light marker calibration video you have to have rather dark room)
  • Doesn't like certain fabrics (e.g. shiny)
  • Requires USB 3.0 controller and external power supply
  • Does not work on Windows 7 (requires Windows 8 and higher)
4 Intel RealSense L515
  • Good resolution and quality of depth map
  • Very compact
  • Has mount for tripod
  • Great tech support, fast fixes, frequent updates
  • Not stable FPS
  • Quality of depth map depends on lightning conditions
  • Foot tracking is not practical with these LiDAR cameras
  • Short USB-cables (use active USB 3.0 repeaters to overcome this drawback)
  • Pricy
5 Intel RealSense D455
  • Up to 90 FPS
  • High resolution of depth map
  • Good field-of-view (FOV)
  • Very compact
  • Has mount for tripod
  • Great tech support, fast fixes, frequent updates
  • High noise of depth data, many artifacts and blur (but iPi tracking is powerful enough to provide reasonable results even with such quality of depth data)
  • Foot tracking is not practical with these depth cameras
  • Board calibration doesn't work with these sensors (only "Calibrate based on light marker" can be applied)
  • Short USB-cables (use active USB 3.0 repeaters to overcome this drawback)
6 First-generation Depth Sensors
  • Ensures tracking quality comparable with that of Kinect 2, but hardware requirements are not so strong
  • Requires USB 2.0 controller
  • Multiple sensors can be connected to a single computer
  • Works on Windows 7 and higher
  • Lower FOV
  • Lower resolution
  • Lower accuracy
  • Less tolerant to lighting conditions
  • Higher mutual interference of sensors leads to more noise in case of using several sensors
  • No mount for tripod
7 Orbbec Astra (PRO)
See above (as 1st gen. depth sensors)
Plus:
  • On sale
See above (as 1st gen. depth sensors)
Plus:
  • Higher price compared to 1st gen. sensors
  • Non-standard tripod mount — M6 instead of 1/4″
8 Intel RealSense D435
  • Up to 90 FPS
  • High resolution of depth map
  • Good field-of-view (FOV)
  • Very compact
  • Great tech support, fast fixes, frequent updates
  • Very low quality of depth map (high noise, many artifacts)
  • Multiple sensor configuration is not practical with this sensors because of accuracy and quality of depth map (cannot be calibrated)
  • RGB camera has significantly lower FOV
9 ASUS Xtion 2
  • Time-of-Flight like Kinect 2
  • Good field-of-view (FOV)
  • Can be mounted in vertical position
  • Very compact
  • Extremely low effective resolution of depth map (too small amount of 3D dots)
  • No mapping between RGB and depth
  • With multiple sensors, sometimes mutual interference issues arise.
  • High price

The winners are Azure Kinect, Orbbec Femto Bolt/Mega and Kinect 2 (Kinect for XBOX One). Intel RealSense L515 and D455 can be also used.

Drivers and Software Libraries

The following sensors don't require special drivers and software to be recognized in iPi Recorder:

  • Azure Kinect
  • Orbbec Femto Bolt/Mega
  • Intel RealSense D400, L500 series
  • ASUS Xtion 2

That is, you can simply plug in these sensors to computer and make recordings in iPi Recorder without need to install any drivers or SDK's.

Other sensors require special drivers and/or software libraries/SDK to be installed:

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