Microsoft's "RoomAlive" Transforms Any Room Into a Giant Xbox Game

An anonymous reader writes Microsoft has unveiled a new augmented reality experience called "RoomAlive". Using projectors and Kinect, RoomAlive allows for fully interactive gaming experiences that take up an entire 3D space. From the article: "RoomAlive builds on the familiar concepts of IllumiRoom, but pushes things a lot further by extending an Xbox gaming environment to an entire living room. It's a proof-of-concept demo, just like IllumiRoom, and it combines Kinect and projectors to create an augmented reality experience that is interactive inside a room. You can reach out and hit objects from a game, or interact with games through any surfaces of a room. RoomAlive tracks the position of a gamers head across all six Kinect sensors, to render content appropriately."

Comments

Oh, great.

[halivar]

"Mooooom! Barclay is stuck in the RoomAlive again!"

Re:Oh, great.

[ArcadeMan]

And how does that make you feel?

...create an augmented reality experience

[lbmouse]

Or you can tell your kids to go outside and experience real reality with fresh air, sunshine, exercise and social interaction.

Re:...create an augmented reality experience

[ArcadeMan]

And best of all, it's in super-ultra-mega-HD with zero lag and infinite frames per second!

Re:...create an augmented reality experience

[schlachter]

It's retina quality graphics! Just like the iPhone screen.

Re:...create an augmented reality experience

[halivar]

Bullshit. I can still see the pixels. I have an eye for these things that most people don't.

Re:...create an augmented reality experience

[MobyDisk]

But the best games have really bad consequences.

Re:...create an augmented reality experience

[Lilith's Heart-shape]

I just got to LV36 in RealLife, and let me tell you something: once you get to LV18 and out of the final mandatory tutorial zone (high school), the game is nothing but a grind. And all the spells got nerfed centuries ago. I'm supposed to have Agidyne, Bufudyne, Ziodyne, Diarahan, and Megidolaon. None of 'em work. This game's defective, and I want my money back.

Re:...create an augmented reality experience

[ColdWetDog]

Are you of the Buddhist persuasion? If so, you could hit the reboot button and try again.

Re:...create an augmented reality experience

[CelticWhisper]

I just got to LV36 in RealLife,

In about 390 years you're going to have a really bad time.

Re:...create an augmented reality experience

[dkman]

Yea, and when I did I don't respawn in 10 seconds!

Re:...create an augmented reality experience

[westlake]

Or you can tell your kids to go outside and experience real reality with fresh air, sunshine, exercise and social interaction.

It is chill and dark here, with a cutting wind and rain.

The kids will be thoroughly soaked by the time they get home from school, and in no mood to socialize with anyone.

Re:...create an augmented reality experience

[The Grim Reefer]

Bullshit. I can still see the pixels. I have an eye for these things that most people don't.

So there's an XKCD that's about you then?

Re:...create an augmented reality experience

[halivar]

Coincidentally, I have Cueball's haircut.

Re:...create an augmented reality experience

[Lilith's Heart-shape]

Tried that once I realized that the end-game content for asuras was the same bullshit all the time. Being a mere human is something of a demotion, no matter what the Buddhists tell you.

Re:...create an augmented reality experience

[DoctorBonzo]

"Funny how the colors of the world don't seem really real until you viddy them on the screen."

Anthony Burgess in "A Clockwork Orange"

industrial use

[schlachter]

I see this as being super useful in product development, industrial, and training settings. It could be drastically cheaper and better than existing commercial solutions, and at the same time, it would probably be prohibitively expensive for your average home gamer.

Don't want

[Anonymous Coward]

I chose videogames over sports so I could sit on my ass and eat doritos all day long. I don't want to exercise more than throwing my controller against the wall and picking it up when some 12 year old aimbot owns me in CoD while calling me a gay faggot. If I have to move to play Xbox then fuck it, I'm going back to TV.

Re:Don't want

[MobyDisk]

I'm kinda glad someone posted this because it is somewhat of an elephant in the room on gaming discussions.

There is a perception that gamers play video games because they are lazy. While that probably applies to many, I think many gamers play video games because they are imaginative, not because they want to escape the physical world. The Wii would not be successful if gamers didn't want to move around. I play games, but I also love laser tag and physically interactive motion sensing arcades like Police 911. The glory of a holodeck is the ability to have both: physical interaction and an imagined reality.

Re:Don't want

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet, the other elephant in the room is that gamers like you describe (casuals, the ones who own Wiis and play at arcades) are largely disowned by "true" gamers (hardcore gamers), like the lazy ones in the OP. It's almost as if these gamers WANT to perpetuate the "lazy gamer" stereotype - whenever people try to add casuals to the gamer group, the hardcore gamers try to exclude them. If casuals were included, the term "gamer" would have a much less negative conotation. But as it stands, right or wrong, when I hear someone call himself (or rarely, herself) a gamer, I think of the character described in the OP, and it leaves a very negative impression on me.

Re:Don't want

[MobyDisk]

Does that differ from hardcore basketball or baseball or football or tennis players?

I am in a gamer group that has some hardcore gamers, but many have families are play more casually now. They are out there. On a similar vein, this is why I started playing ultimate frisbee. There are "pick-up" groups and they allow anyone to play. When I started I couldn't throw a frisbee >10 feet with 30 degrees of accuracy. I still suck, but not quite as badly. :-)

In general, be it games or sports or wine or movies - you have to find people who aren't snobs about their hobby.

Re:uhm

[internerdj]

Not sure I want a living room that is completely white unless I have an Xbox on.

Nintendo On

[tepples]

That or the Nintendo On hoax from before the Wii was announced.

Re:It amazes me

[ArcadeMan]

Don't think of the Kinect as a handless controller and think of it as an amazing, low-cost 3D scanner. I'm not sure why we haven't seen any "Kinect used to make 3D scans for 3D printers" projects yet.

Interesting

[MobyDisk]

Just some thoughts.

First of all, clearly the video falls short of what everyone imagines: a holodeck. Instead we see bad game with poor graphics, limited accuracy, and bad response times. Just a reminder to everyone: Is it 2014 not 2364. The most fascinating part is to see it map out the room by drawing those horizontal and vertical bars. It seems like the hardware might actually be ahead of the software here. Since it knows the layout of the room, it should not show characters walking on the walls or stuck in corners, yet it does so.

I wonder if this would be better if they didn't try to make it work in a living room covered in furniture. Instead, these could replace the arcade: a custom made arena for playing these kinds of games. The benefit here over a VR helmet is the social aspect, and no motion sickness. But clearly we need better software, better projectors, and better sensors before this is a reality. I just hope they don't launch something before it is ready: that could delay the industry a decade because then, even once the tech IS ready, everyone will be remembering the cruddy version that came out 10 years prior.

Re:uhm

[Ravaldy]

You don't really need to. It all depends on how anal you are about the color tones. I have a projector that projects on a green wall. The whites are white. If you start dissecting the colors I'm sure they aren't 100% but it doesn't seem to bother anybody that watches video on it

Re:uhm

[gsslay]

This is down to the magic of perception. As demonstrated by the Checker shadow illusion. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... )

Your wall is most certainly green, but your brain sees it as white.

Projectors and Kinects X 6 ? $6,000...

[jpellino]

White sheets to cover your walls? $200... Spending your afternoon explaining to your better half why there are giant holes in your walls where you swear the moles were? Priceless.

Re:It amazes me

[ArcadeMan]

But are they cheaper than a Kinect?

Training and Simulation

[slackoon]

Training and Simulation coudl really use this technology. Although there already exists augmented reality training, having a company like Microsoft advance the technology can only be beneficial. Just imaging the perks of having special forces, police, first responders, etc. Being able to scale real stairs in buildings but battle artificial flames or artificial enemies. All the realism without the risk (insert argument of whether or not that's actually possible here). Another advantage would be that others could view, live or recorded, the events taking place!

Re:It amazes me

[kamapuaa]

Because who the heck needs a 3D scanner? Only a small percentage of people have a 3D printer and only a small percentage of those people would want a hacked 3D scanner.

Re:uhm

[Ravaldy]

Actually, in this case it's not a matter of perception.

The Checker shadow illusion is the brain over compensating whereas the wall being white is actually what is making it to your eyes.

Matter generates color because it absorbs/reflects certain parts of the spectrum.

http://www.colourtherapyhealin...

Something I don't want to hear...

[hedgemage]

"The blood spray particle physics are AMAZING!"

XBox One - Play Kama Sutra

[pkinetics]

Game keeps track of all positions utilized.

Achievements can be awesome

Could also backfire if achievement includes count of different partners. I guess that would be a different game....

Bah!

[reboot246]

My whole house is already a video game. It's called "real life", and it's harder than any video game you've ever played, though it is fun at times. ;)

Holodeck

[BobSutan]

So what you're saying is version 1.0 of the Star Trek Holodeck now exists.