That’s Not a Backlight. THIS is a Backlight: Microsoft Plan to ?Go Big? with IllumiRoom Tech

Microsoft plan to make you fall over repeatedly in the safety of your own home with their new IllumiRoom system, which will use Kinect and projector technology to fill your field of view.

The International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), held at Las Vegas Convention Center earlier this month, gave the world a sneak peak at the technological wizardry that may grace our homes in the near future.

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TRON used to be fiction…

One particular innovation which can’t fail to catch the eye is Microsoft’s IllumiRoom technology. Just using giant flat-screens to display high-resolution Xbox games is so last decade, now the Microsoft boffins have got their eye on your whole living room.

The fascinating video above shows how the new technology, possibly Kinect 2-related, will scan the contours of the surrounding room to project environmental features and effects throughout the user’s entire field of view. The footage shows everything from the weapons effects that strafe across the walls to weather effects, explosions and full environments that fill the room. It even appears to project an image of the room onto itself for more subtle visual distortion effects (see the gunfire animation at 0:58).

According to The Verge, this release may well be part of Microsoft’s strategy to build anticipation for the possible unveiling of the next generation Xbox at E3 in June this year which unconfirmed rumours claim to be “most powerful out of all the next gen consoles about 4 to 6 times more powerful than Wii U and 2 to 3 times more powerful than Playstation Omni.”

But is it just a dream?

However, the Microsoft Research IllumiRoom project page describes this technology as “proof of concept” which would suggest it is not quite yet in a marketable state, despite appearances in the video. The technology is described as “a Kinect for Windows camera and a projector to blur the lines between on-screen content and the environment.”

“…our system can change the appearance of the room, induce apparent motion, extend the field of view, and enable entirely new game experiences.”

The potential applications are certainly exciting, as are the inevitable YouTube videos of people falling over due to motion-sickness. Quite how the competition are going to respond is anyone’s guess, but Sony have also been experimenting with augmented reality and have proven what can be achieved with only a full film crew, a studio set and some stage-hands, as shown below…

Source: The Verge

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Source: DualPixels (via The Verge)


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Author
Mat Westhorpe
Broken paramedic and coffee-drinking Englishman whose favourite dumb animal is an oxymoron. After over a decade of humping and dumping the fat and the dead, my lower spine did things normally reserved for Rubik's cubes, bringing my career as a medical clinician to an unexpectedly early end. Fortunately, my real passion is in writing and given that I'm now highly qualified in the art of sitting down, I have the time to pursue it. Having blogged about video games (well, mostly EVE Online) for years, I hope to channel my enjoyment of wordcraft and my hobby of gaming into one handy new career that doesn't involve other people's vomit.