the tech is around, but at very high price (a normal pointing laser costs 2k~3k, a proper lidar costs 30k to 70k). I think that is what the parent comment means "very unlikely".

PrimeSense (the company behind the Kinect IR technology) had a competitor at the time called 3DV systems (or something like that), that made an RGBD TOF camera that worked way, way better than the kinect - but they ran into financing problems, and were bought at-cost by Microsoft (something like $30M, which was the investment). That was in 2007, and even back then they were able to produce them for ~$300/BOM if I remember correctly.

At the time, everyone assumed MS just bought them to shut out competitors - but it appears they actually use the thing.

The company was Canesta. ToF sensors were their thing. [1]

Microsoft bought them in 2010, and it seems like they finally got their tech integrated (and cut Primesense out in the process).

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canesta

And I was thinking about 3DV Systems' [1] product called ZCam [2]. I wasn't aware of the Canesta deal - apparently, MS cornered the market of depth cameras. Personally, I think this deserves some kind of regulatory anti-trust action. But that's just me.

[1] http://venturebeat.com/2009/02/21/sources-confirm-microsoft-... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZCam

The Intel Time of Flight SDK camera is $150 http://forum.libcinder.org/topic/future-is-here-time-of-flig...

Thanks! I am looking into this space for a while for my personal project. but 1m~3m distance is too small to my application. Do you know if this is plausible for direct sunlight and anyway to improve the distance?