A current Microsoft research project, Illumiroom, could offer a new way to use the Kinect. Now, before you roll your eyes, let me say there would no requirements of no dancing in the middle of your living room, nor any shouting at your TV. Instead, Illumiroom offers an interesting way of extending the level of immersion of great games by pushing the visual environment past the confines of your TV. Here’s the promotional bit.
Illumiroom uses Kinect 3D to assess the colors and 3D structure of a room. When connected to a projector, it can then cast images that give the impression of actual 3D objects in real space. For example, if playing in a snowy environment, snow would seem to cascade down towards you, piling up against the edges of your furniture. The five-minute demo below further explores the system’s tech and showcases its abilities thus far in development.
An interesting hardware hack to be sure, but the real question is whether or not it is a viable option for the future. Visual optimization is a popular area of research at the moment, with the Oculus Rift seeming to become more and more legitimate by the day. But, if such headgear manages to flourish, Illumiroom could very well become obsolete; what does the living room wall matter when you can’t even see it? Plus, having to purchase an additional, rather costly piece of equipment in order to utilize Illumiroom is an obvious setback.
Yet, as a happy alternative to completely cutting yourself off from the world and your friends as well as a side step from what could be a nauseating and painful-on-the-neck experience (all possible downfalls to the Oculus Rift), Illumiroom is, at the very least, a cool concept that occupies a nice intermediary zone. Even though it is doubtful that it will become anything more than a research project anytime soon, it is an inspiring hack nonetheless.
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This is one of those things that is neat from my geek perspective, but at the same time I question the practicality of something like this.There are so many variables in which this just wouldn’t work, the same thing that the Kinect has going against it.
Poor lighting conditions, room size, set up of the device and more could all make this little more than a pretty and expensive light show on your wall.
Like I said it’s extremely fascinating from a tech head perspective, but I just don’t see this having any real long term application in gaming.
Will there be a bundle that comes with its very own white room? Would give me something to do with my kinect at least.
Same. Though, it seems to handle more issues than one would preliminarily expect. A Kinect scan for room size and set up takes care of a lot of issues, and the projector can compensate for lighting issues.
If I had money to blow and developers who would do a decent job with it, I’d totally go for it. But alas, neither is the case.