Microsoft Reveals Xbox IllumiRoom Proof-of-Concept

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Microsoft Reveals Xbox IllumiRoom Proof-of-Concept

Post by Eorl @ 10:35am 10/01/13 | 20 Comments

Microsoft Research, a department in Microsoft that does the obvious has today revealed a new proof-of-concept for the Xbox, IllumiRoom. The system is designed to push the boundaries of your living room by using space outside of the screen to help project visualisations, supposedly to enhance your entertainment experience.

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.

Our system uses the appearance and the geometry of the room (captured by Kinect) to adapt the projected visuals in real-time without any need to custom pre-process the graphics. What you see in the videos below has been captured live and is not the result of any special effects added in post production.

The project was designed by Brett Jones, Hrvoje Benko, Eyal Ofek and Andy Wilson, however is not yet fully functional for consumer usage. The team has stated on the Research website that they plan to have more information and a paper explaining all the details at this years ACM CHI 2013, a conference on human-computer interaction in Paris. You can check out the video below for a brief look at the new technology, or head over to the official website for more.

microsoft research kinect technology

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BladeRunner
Posted 10:52am 10/1/13

Interesting idea. I guess you would have to align the screen and the projector in some way.

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ravn0s
Posted 11:05am 10/1/13

that's actually kind of cool. unless the next xbox comes with a projector, i doubt many people would use it.

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deadlyf
Posted 11:06am 10/1/13

I thought it looked kind of shit.

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pjs75
Posted 11:09am 10/1/13

Another boffin project that will end up gathering dust like Kinect.
The problem is that the effort for the developers to rejig their games to support is too much, so you get 2 games that actually support it, people don't buy it, and it dies a slow death.
Unless it's standard hardware included as part the console, all these 'extras' have a limited shelf life.

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Tele
Posted 11:15am 10/1/13

Look kind of annoying to me... pointless

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HurricaneJim
Posted 11:33am 10/1/13

Wake me when they get to holosuites

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Khel
Posted 11:55am 10/1/13

The bits where its just projecting the game outside the screen looks a bit shit, but the stars, and the effects where it actually messes with the furniture to make it look like its moving are pretty cool

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glynd
Posted 11:58am 10/1/13

Pretty cool concept. Whether it can be pulled off effectively is another thing.

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TiT
Posted 12:05pm 10/1/13

the biggest mistake which they havent learnt from is you dont play FPS with gamepad!

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tel
Posted 12:24pm 10/1/13

Might look better without the furniture and stuff.

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eski
Posted 12:48pm 10/1/13

Chance of coming to market.

0%

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badfunkstripe
Posted 01:39pm 10/1/13

For this sort of concept, they'd be better have some kind of eye wear to augment reality around the screen. Or have the hudd or something.

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Nathan
Posted 02:28pm 10/1/13

Neat idea (though I agree with Khel, the parts where it just expands the level past the edge of the TV are dumb) but it just seems too niche to ever become a commercial product.

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BladeRunner
Posted 05:06pm 10/1/13

Wake me when they get to holosuites

More like Holo-Hookers.

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E.T.
Posted 10:48pm 10/1/13

Very nice. I like it.

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simul
Posted 08:12am 11/1/13

Hahaha, I do not believe my eyes, SIGCHI linked by Ausgamers. Mind blown.

Anyway, looks cool - one thing to note is the video was probably done by the project team, not by a PR division, so what it looks like is most likely a lot more accurate than the usual post-processed commercial shots. I guess the real question is what difference does it make to engagement/immersion - which I am sure will be in the CHI paper.

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Nitro
Posted 11:39am 11/1/13

Very cool. I think it would add a lot to the experience in an unobtrusive way.

Kinda reminds me of using a projector with parabolic screen like they do in some simulators.

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trillion
Posted 11:14pm 11/1/13

looks like they had someone meld that video projection mapping onto buildings into what more can they try in the xbox experience between then and next gen

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TufNuT
Posted 12:54am 12/1/13

cool idea, but they will need to improve it a lot before taking it to market. i think this is one of those in between projects, you know where they develop something and what they learn from it becomes the basis for something much more awesome..

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