Illumiroom | KitGuru https://www.kitguru.net KitGuru.net - Tech News | Hardware News | Hardware Reviews | IOS | Mobile | Gaming | Graphics Cards Mon, 06 Oct 2014 09:13:04 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://www.kitguru.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/cropped-KITGURU-Light-Background-SQUARE2-32x32.png Illumiroom | KitGuru https://www.kitguru.net 32 32 Microsoft’s RoomAlive is augmented gaming with Kinect projectors https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/jon-martindale/microsofts-roomalive-is-augmented-gaming-with-kinect-projectors/ https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/jon-martindale/microsofts-roomalive-is-augmented-gaming-with-kinect-projectors/#comments Mon, 06 Oct 2014 07:36:15 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=215157 Remember Microsoft's Ilumiroom project? It was a technology that used a projector to make your gaming room the entire screen, rather than just the main display you were using. It was an interesting concept, albeit a little unnecessary seeming, considering whatever was being projected was hard to make out and would be completely ruined by …

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Remember Microsoft's Ilumiroom project? It was a technology that used a projector to make your gaming room the entire screen, rather than just the main display you were using. It was an interesting concept, albeit a little unnecessary seeming, considering whatever was being projected was hard to make out and would be completely ruined by someone else being in the room with you. However clearly Microsoft hasn't stopped pushing this technology forward, as it now has a new system called Room Alive , that uses six Kinects cameras and projectors, to make an augmented reality experience.

roomalive

RoomAlive is able to map out an entire room and use everything in it, including the player, as a potential surface to project on. Similarly, thanks to the Kinect cameras, the player is tracked and their interactions also mapped out, allowing them to shoot, touch or interact in any number of ways with digital objects, projected onto the walls and real world items in the room.

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILb5ExBzHqw']

All of this is done by the cameras mapping out horizontal and vertical surfaces and then linking up with the Unity engine to paste over content that fits those surfaces. To show what that can do, Microsoft and Projection Mapping, made four distinct scenarios for this demonstration, turning the living room into a factory, a forest with procedurally generated, falling raindrops, a trap laden dungeon and a simple whack-a-mole game.

One of the quite impressive aspects of the technology is the ease with which it is to set up. While there is certainly some expertise needed for mounting the cameras and projectors on the ceiling and wiring them all up, as long as the projections are overlapping in some way, the system can self calibrate. RoomAlive therefore could be installed by an end user.

Although the cost of six Kinect cameras and projectors is likely to put most people off.

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KitGuru Says: This certainly is a bit more interesting than Ilumiroom. What do you guys think? Would you rather a tech like this, or something more akin to the Oculus Rift?

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IllumiRoom would be too expensive for consumers, says Microsoft https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/console-desktop-pc/jon-martindale/illumiroom-would-be-too-expensive-for-consumers-says-microsoft/ https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/console-desktop-pc/jon-martindale/illumiroom-would-be-too-expensive-for-consumers-says-microsoft/#comments Mon, 02 Sep 2013 11:08:14 +0000 http://www.kitguru.net/?p=150482 One of the most eye catching technologies Microsoft has shown off in the past year or two, has been IllumiRoom, a strange, projector system, that places in-game footage over your living room wall and floor, instead of just on the usual display – seemingly forgetting the point we have projector screens in the first place. …

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One of the most eye catching technologies Microsoft has shown off in the past year or two, has been IllumiRoom, a strange, projector system, that places in-game footage over your living room wall and floor, instead of just on the usual display – seemingly forgetting the point we have projector screens in the first place. However, despite its strange, bookshelf overlayed gameplay, Microsoft doesn't think this would ever catch on, because it would just be too expensive.

When asked about the technology by Ausgamers at Gamescom, Microsoft's head of product planning for the Xbox One, Albert Penello had this to say: “I wouldn’t expect you’ll see that [on the Xbox One]. It’s very, very cool tech but it’s, like, for a consumer, it requires projectors and things. It’s really super-neat if you’re in the lab and you’ve got Microsoft money and you could totally set up this awesome lab, but… we looked at it, but for an average customer it’s, like, thousands of dollars [for the set up].”

[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=re1EatGRV0w']

On top of the projector cost, there's also the cost of having a room of the house that nobody can walk through while you're gaming. If they did, it would destroy any sort of illusion.

Microsoft showed off an Illumiroom concept earlier this year at CES, back when we were all calling it the Xbox 720.

KitGuru Says: Maybe I'm being unfair. It might be the case that when you're playing like this, you continue to look at the screen and just take in the added projected extras via your peripherals, making you more immersed – but surely you'd just be better off investing in a bigger screen? 

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