Microsoft makes your room part of the game!

[taolurker]

Microsoft Illumiroom

The company unveiled their ‘IllumiRoom’ technology in January at CES, but we're now getting a more complete picture of what it can do. And it's pretty cool stuff.

In a nutshell, IllumiRoom extends the game beyond the borders of your television. Working in conjunction with a wireless projector that sits on your coffee table, it projects images from the game onto the walls surrounding your TV.

Just Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=nGGMv9RnJIA

[Bzalthek]

Fuck that.  Then I'd have to clean.

[Miasma]

I don't have a coffee table.

[Speedy Cerviche]

That's pretty cool adds peripheral vision to games. Too bad you still have to play a FPS on a gamepad.

[Sky]

That's pretty cool, but also quite limited. The bigger the display, the less useful. I did like the part where the powerup thingy was visible on the floor out of frame.

But only working with one console and then really only good for games coded for it? Meh.

[Merusk]

It's the first step towards holosuites, get excited! 

[taolurker]

Fuck that.  Then I'd have to clean.

Actually looks like you won't have to clean because it detects and projects onto things surrounding the TV, so in the case of your mess it becomes part of the projection screen. Coming soon the ability to hide your mess under a projection of the room in a perpetual state of cleanliness.

[schild]

The first youtube comment has it correct:

I don't understand why have the TV in the first place when a projector would be sitting on the coffee table ?!

Ding ding ding.

If they're doing this all with a projector that is both bright enough to warp the way furniture looks and has enough pixels to trace the edges of furniture (let's be kind and say 1080p / 1000 lumens) - there's no reason whatsoever for you to need a TV.

This is dumber than the 3DS, which is super dumb. Which is already dumber than the Wii U, which was somehow dumber than the Wii.

[Yegolev]

This isn't cool, it is stupid.  This is worse than WiiU, which actually does neat things in LEGO City.

I also do not have a coffee table.  I don't know where the Xbox designers live, but it's not a house like mine.

[Lantyssa]

The resolution on the projector might be sufficient to handle many surfaces, but the resolution of the display it was projecting was shit.  So it doesn't even do that well.

[Mithas]

This isn't cool, it is stupid.  This is worse than WiiU, which actually does neat things in LEGO City.

I also do not have a coffee table.  I don't know where the Xbox designers live, but it's not a house like mine.

No coffee table? #dealwithit

Sorry, bad joke.

[HaemishM]

This isn't even tits on a bull stupid. This is shittind dicknipples level of stupid, for exactly the reason schild mentioned.

[schild]

As an aside, this is way cooler, way classier, and not a system full of PC ports:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/woodenshark/lightpack-ambient-backlight-for-your-displays?ref=live

[Merusk]

I don't know where the Xbox designers live, but it's not a house like mine.

Now that I've seen the video, the answer is obvious and also explains why you don't have a coffee table.

They live in an Ikea warehouse.  You have a home decorator with taste.

[Yegolev]

You have a home decorator with taste.

My wife will appreciate that.

[Merusk]

Well I certainly didn't think it was you, Mr. Tux! 

[Stormwaltz]

Too bad you still have to play a FPS on a mouse and keyboard.

Obligatory FIFY. 

[Khaldun]

This is pretty much desperation "We have to have something new because the revenue projections have a line marked 'New Hardware Product' on the graph starting in 2014" bullshit. Then watch them do everything but figure out what it's actually good for. It's like the Kinect: just about the only great thing that's ever been done with it involves people hacking it to make art or other stuff that has nothing to do with gaming per se.

[Zaljerem]

"Nice gimmick" would probably be my response.

That kickstarter looks pretty neat. I wish I'd've gotten in on the earlier specials, but $80 for that functionality isn't unreasonable.
I have 2 sets of MadCatz Cyborg Gaming Lights. They do a pretty nice job of throwing ambient light from the screen for most every game I've thrown at them. A few games have built in-support, some don't work, etc. It's nice for video and audio too.

amBx seems more focused on a commercial market; the community is pretty dead, the amBx keyboard seems to be vaporware, etc. But hey, the lights work great on 64-bit Win7. I paid $100 for the first set and $60 on eBay for the second. They'll do for now.

[Margalis]

Looks very distracting and nobody is going to waste GPU power filling a bunch of pixels that get projected onto houseplants. I suspect if this ever came out it would be used for little more than solid fill colors.

[Yegolev]

Or Mario Kart and a huge bowl.  But, no.

[Samwise]

Or Mario Kart and a huge bowl.

  Okay, now I want one.

[Cyrrex]

The first youtube comment has it correct:

I don't understand why have the TV in the first place when a projector would be sitting on the coffee table ?!

Ding ding ding.

If they're doing this all with a projector that is both bright enough to warp the way furniture looks and has enough pixels to trace the edges of furniture (let's be kind and say 1080p / 1000 lumens) - there's no reason whatsoever for you to need a TV.

This is dumber than the 3DS, which is super dumb. Which is already dumber than the Wii U, which was somehow dumber than the Wii.

And on top of that, if you have the projector in the first place, wouldn't it be better to just have it project the entire game image across a huge screen instead of using 80% of it for silly effects, most of which are irritatingly out of focus or less bright? 

I guess I can see a couple of "that'd be kinda cool" moments, but you can already achieve greater effect by doing nothing fancier than hooking up to an ordinary projector.

[KallDrexx]

And on top of that, if you have the projector in the first place, wouldn't it be better to just have it project the entire game image across a huge screen instead of using 80% of it for silly effects, most of which are irritatingly out of focus or less bright? 

I guess I can see a couple of "that'd be kinda cool" moments, but you can already achieve greater effect by doing nothing fancier than hooking up to an ordinary projector.

Not sure I get all the hate in this thread, especially since this is a research project and not a consumer product yet.  There is a lot of interesting stuff that Microsoft Research demos that would be gimmicky if it comes out in a product all by itself, this is no exception.

Also, you will not get the same effect with a straight on projector.  The whole point of this is that it scans the area around your TV and can modify the colors so the projected images stand out against the colors of the crap around your TV.  If you try and do a straight projection the projection will be washed away and be harder to make out if your room is setup like the one in the video.

It also demoed a lot of really cool effects that you can't achieve without this, such as the "distortion wobble" effect they had in FPSs, which I can see being immersive in some games.

[HaemishM]

"Distortion wobble" aka "Barf Inducer."

There were some cool effects but it does seem to be kind of silly. I don't see it being priced anywhere in a range that would be affordable for what it offers. It's probably better as a pure research project.

[Miasma]

I have to assume the reason they don't just use the projector for the main image is that it won't be very powerful, a good projector would cost more than even the high range of what the new xbox is expected to cost.

Aside from not having a coffee table I couldn't play games very long in darkness like this would need anyways.  I think it would be really cool to be able to move the hud in whatever game I'm playing off my tv and put it in a huge font surrounding it though.  I'll have to wait for some sort of oled wallpaper I think though :).

[Sky]

I'm surprised so few people have coffee tables anymore.

[Rasix]

Works out great as a craft table for the kid.

[Pennilenko]

I have to assume the reason they don't just use the projector for the main image is that it won't be very powerful, a good projector would cost more than even the high range of what the new xbox is expected to cost.

The price of good projectors is falling very rapidly. I am willing to bet that you can get a high quality picture within the next year or two for around five hundred bucks.

[Margalis]

I'm surprised so few people have coffee tables anymore.

My television is on my coffee table.

[Speedy Cerviche]

Mine is more of a beer table.

[Soulflame]

I wonder if the intent of the device (plus always-on) is to get demographic information about your household.

[Venkman]

I wonder if the intent of the device (plus always-on) is to get demographic information about your household.

It's just the always-on piece. Eventually every stupid IP-enabled device we buy for convenience will be sending info somewhere. Fridge will send info to the health insurance company you lie to about your weight. The car will send info to the car insurance company about the real cause of the accident. The toaster will yell at you for not using whole grain. And the Xbox will send your email to Benjamin Moore so they can contact you with a "helpful message" about how out of date your living room wall color is. 

[Samwise]

The part of the projector + camera + room analysis thing that I thought was interesting was the potential of having a projector figure out for itself where flat surfaces are that would make good screens, how far away they are, etc, and project the image in such a way as to correct for off angles.  I'm mentally picturing putting this thing on a table in a corner of a room, gesturing to where on the wall I want the image to be, and getting a rectangular in-focus image right there.  That seems entirely possible with the tech they've got, although of course you have the problem of the extra hardware making the projector bulkier and more expensive.

[Kail]

The part of the projector + camera + room analysis thing that I thought was interesting was the potential of having a projector figure out for itself where flat surfaces are that would make good screens, how far away they are, etc, and project the image in such a way as to correct for off angles.  I'm mentally picturing putting this thing on a table in a corner of a room, gesturing to where on the wall I want the image to be, and getting a rectangular in-focus image right there.  That seems entirely possible with the tech they've got, although of course you have the problem of the extra hardware making the projector bulkier and more expensive.

It seems unlikely that it'll work like that, to me.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but geometrically, wouldn't you also have to know where the viewer was sitting to pull of that kind of trick?  I mean, you could assume he was front and centre in front of the TV if you want (though I don't think that's always true for everybody's living room setup) but the distance he's sitting back from the TV would be completely unknown.  You could maybe calibrate it by hand, but then every time you moved it would break the illusion (like the 3D effect for the 3DS) and it would just flat out not be able to work for multiple players in different places the same room.