While Apple seems to have stopped experimenting and looks more focused on litigating competitors out of the market, Microsoft is silently innovating. Exhibit 1: IllumiRoom, a proof-of-concept technology that immersively projects the game environment into your physical space using the Kinect sensor and a projector.
The concept is simple: the Kinect camera surveys your physical space to ‘see’ the layout and the objects that are out there, and a projector extends elements from the game environment – such as the road in a 3D racing game or snowflakes falling in a FPS environment, in order to bring these elements out into your living room in real time “without any need to custom pre-process the graphics” in the game itself (which is to say, to have it work with any existing game).
We’ve long believed that Kinect, a fairly simple technology, is going to be extremely important in the future of gaming and/or human/machine interaction. Despite the fact that some hardcore gamers think of it as a novelty, we can imagine the Kinect devices of the future having multiple placements and not only in front of the user, and functioning not just as cameras or sensors reading the environment, but as a system that is projecting information outward as well.
Go here for more information on IllumiRoom.
