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IllumiRoom To Take Gaming Visuals Outside the Box and Onto the Living Room
cylonlover writes "At CES in January, Microsoft Research teased its IllumiRoom concept, which involves projecting an image around a TV screen to enhance video games with additional visuals. Unfortunately, the company didn't offer much info beyond a short video that briefly showed it in action. But the team behind the project recently showed up at the CHI 2013 conference in Paris with some more in-depth details about how IllumiRoom will not only expand the game screen, but completely alter the appearance of your living room."
I think I speak for most gaming enthusiasts when I say "focus on hardware that will be more robust for a better part of this next generation and the games that will be on it and skip the gimmicks".
Really? Because this is from MS this is uncool?
This, plus kinnect, could be the interface of the future. Install it on the ceiling and you could project a video or keyboard on any flat surface. Never have to look for a remote again. Need a calculator, a recipe, a note pad, facebook, etc?
This is Microsoft research. They do come up with cool things, the cool things just never make it to market. And needless to say, Microsoft developing the product for their own platform will result in a middling device.
Cool? Definitely. Improve the gaming experience? More than likely. Reality? Not even remotely close.
I would think this would be nice for the office or desktop: your open docs and apps can be spread over the desktop, keep whatever you are updating or need high resolution for on the monitor. When you don't need the high res view anymore, drag the window onto the desktop and move something else form the desktop to the monitor.
AB HOC POSSUM VIDERE DOMUM TUUM
Did.. you actually read anything about it? This has nothing to do with motion of the player. The Kinect is used as a 3D camera in order to determine the shape of your room and the objects in it, so the image produced by the projector can then be altered to provide a "seamless" (subject to position of the player) continuous image, or movement which interacts with the room. About the only thing NOT moving in this is the player, although that would be a logical extension of it.
"The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
... and take my money!
"The true measure of a person is how they act when they know they won't get caught." - DSRilk
Since I'm not a gamer, I can't speak for it's desirability in gaming. But I think I can see a niche use for something like this when I notice the "ripple your room" effect mentioned in the slideshow. I like a lot of bass heavy music (yes my neighbour hates me, thanks for asking), I think it'd be cool to have the room appear to quiver in a subtle way in time with the kick drums or long bass guitar solos. For that matter; think of the iconic water ripple scene in Jurassic park. Imagine your room rippling when the water does. Again, done in a subtle way (like most good special effects!) it could really help the sense of immersion.