Microsoft unveiled a new technology that turns the entire room into an extension of the television screen. The new tech is called IllumiRoom and it was showcased during Samsung's keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show.
According to Microsoft's description of the technology on its webpage, as reported by IGN, the IllumiRoom uses Kinect and a projector "to blur the lines between on-screen content and the environment we live in allowing us to combine our virtual and physical worlds."
According to the article, Microsoft's says IllumiRoom "augments the area surrounding a television screen with projected visualizations to enhance the traditional living room entertainment experience" and "can change the appearance of the room, induce apparent motion, extend the field of view, and enable entirely new game experiences." Kinect captures the geometry of a room and adapts projected visuals "in real-time without any need to custom pre-process the graphics."
You can check out a demonstration of the new technology below. The videos shows the environments of several games sprawling through an average living room and beyond the television screen as bullets fly and fires rage out into the room.
The website Engadget described the tech video shown during Samsung's keynote and said that it featured someone playing video games while it appeared to snow inside of the living room. According to Engadget, Microsoft promised the audience that the demonstration was not a video tricks and that it was indeed a video of a lab demo.
The technology is currently in a proof-of-concept stage and Microsoft has not said whether it plans to incorporate the technology into the unannounced successor of the Xbox 360. But from the tech demo in the video you have got to assume that it is more than likely and the tech matches up with some of the earlier leaks regarding the Xbox 720/ Durango.
Microsoft says more details will be revealed at the ACM SIGCHI Conference in Paris in April.
What do you think of this new tech? Do you think it can change the way we play video games? Tell us what you think in the comment section below...
