CV,

If you're interested in PCL, please join us on pcl-users@code.ros.org for discussions. As Raphael mentioned, you can 
either use the node driver or the nodelet driver, depending on what sort of application you're looking at building.

We haven't spent a lot of time to document kinect_pcl, as we transitioned to the openni driver, which supports both the 
PrimeSense reference design (and hopefully the new Asus cameras that will come on the market) and the Microsoft Kinect.

For PCL 0.8, we're looking at better documentation for nodelet launch files, as well as some proper demos with the 
Kinect. We just haven't had time to do that yet, as we're busy with a lot of other stuff. Contributions welcome ;)

Cheers,
Radu.
--
http://pointclouds.org

On 01/13/2011 09:32 AM, Raphael Favier wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> If you only need colored point clouds from the kinect, just use the kinect
> package. From the documentation, it seems the same as kinect_pcl except it
> is not in a nodelet.
> It works very well and produces colored sensor_msgs/PointCloud2 messages
> directly. Follow the steps described
> http://www.ros.org/wiki/kinect/Tutorials/Getting%20Started here  to get it
> working in 2 minutes.
> If you really need the pcl point cloud format, you can convert the
> PointCloud2 using pcl::fromROSMsg().
>
> It you really want to use kinect_pcl, I think you will have to dig in the
> http://www.ros.org/wiki/nodelet nodelet  pakage.
>
> I hope it helps
>
> Raph
>