IllumiRoom Projects Images Beyond Your TV for an Immersive Gaming Experience

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BOT#00001

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Microsoft's IllumiRoom uses a Kinect for Windows camera 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. For example, our system can change the appearance of the room, induce apparent motion, extend the field of view, and enable entirely new game experiences.

<iframe width="1280" height="720" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/re1EatGRV0w" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
 
Cool idea, but my ideal setup someday would be a big room with 3 walls and 3x1080p(or 4K) projectors :-D .
 
Its the same projection mapping crap the car manufacturers are using at car shows this past year. Different application. Instead of premapping a car to project routines on, they map the room for its usable surfaces and either go for ambient effect or extend whats on the screen. There is actually a decent chance they are whoring this out just to make it like they are doing something, bragging rights of a portfolio item that doesn't even exist.

Slapping an ambient theme based on whats going on in the game, wire framing the map or projecting an on screen effect off the screen, is neat. But its not something developers are likely to support and a product likely not to come to market. Not sure how projectors are at the moment since we are stuffing them into laptops and cell phones now. But cheap projectors blow ass and good ones blow ass to keep running.
 
I'd imagine that the support for most games would not be hard to do, similar to how "3d" is tacked-on to many games which were never developed with 3D in mind through the drivers.

However, they'd have to get nvidia and/or ATI on board which might not be easy at all... or have it be proprietary (i.e. the game itself must support it) which would pretty much be a disaster probably since there's no way it'll catch on.
 
HeatSurge said:
I'd imagine that the support for most games would not be hard to do, similar to how "3d" is tacked-on to many games which were never developed with 3D in mind through the drivers.

However, they'd have to get nvidia and/or ATI on board which might not be easy at all... or have it be proprietary (i.e. the game itself must support it) which would pretty much be a disaster probably since there's no way it'll catch on.
Click to expand...

But i think you just fell into their trap. You just associated this with PC gaming. They want people to see this and imagine it on everything Microsoft. While they used the "Kinect for Windows", the whole thing was based around an XBOX 360. Guy even talked to his Xbox lol. They make this so when people are standing around bullshitting at my job im going to hear some jack ass say "Hey did you see what microsoft is doing".

If they do anything like this don't be surprised if they ignore PC Gamers. Even when all of it can be done on a PC and the equipment if put out for console will likely be hacked to the point microsoft pays attention. If anything like this comes out they will be pretty hard focused on the 720 launch.

As far as adding it to existing games without any involvement of the developer and making it universal, I don't think the system is going to detect a snowy environment for example very well. Rendering a game at a higher resolution to push its content off the screen onto your surrounding desk wall for example would be great if the information wasn't stored on the edges. I could see some preset moods for certain types of games, Console or PC.

Wire frame environments might not be too hard to pull off on games with a few engines out there. DirectX can be hooked pretty easily to pull some info. But good luck with that on the unofficial side. I wouldn't want to run that sort of thing without the support of the developer.
 
Cool. Could easily become mainstream if a big AAA supports it. But the ad is just about getting the Kinect for Windows name in people's brains.
 
If it's a X720 feature, I wouldn't be surprised if it's actually "forced" on developers to support it, and it makes the most sense actually... yeah I didn't think about it being the living room and all - although I'll probably have a PC in my living room hooked up to the "TV" in my future house probably. And consoles are just PCs anyway, they can be updated etc., just closed.
 
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