Speaking during Samsung’s CES keynote yesterday Microsoft revealed a research project for a new display technology called Illuiroom, which completely fills up a room with additional footage/images that work in conjunction with the video playing on the users television screen.
A concept video (embedded below) was played during the keynote presentation that showed someone playing a Xbox 360 game, then saying the words “Xbox, go big”. At that point the room is “scanned” and additional footage begins to play across the walls and furniture in the room. Illuiroom was shown displaying everything from an extremely wider view while running down a street in a first-person-shooter, to making it appear as if it was snowing inside the room.
Details are still a bit sketchy at this point, but it appears that Illuiroom works by having Kinect capture the “appearance and the geometry of the room” which is then used “to adapt the projected visuals in real-time without any need to custom pre-process the graphics”.
If the Illumiroom Microsoft Research project sounds familiar, that’s because we first saw this concept in a Microsoft patent last year. At the time the technology was speculated to be in development for the unannounced next generation Xbox, but that speculation has been neither confirmed nor hinted at with today’s demonstration.
Whether Illumiroom actually becomes a consumer product is anyone’s guess at this point, however, even if it does don’t expect this to become the standard viewing method of the next-gen Xbox. The entire set up seems to require a notable amount of additional hardware and it is not something that would be aimed at the mass market.
Plus, I can still totally see that guys houseplants breaking the projection.
Check out the Illumiroom concept video below and we will make sure to let you know if Microsoft plans to make this technology into a consumer product.
