Illumiroom

During Samsungs keynote at CES earlier this week, Microsoft unveiled their new IllumiRoom technology. Principally this turns the entire room around your TV into an extension of the screen itself. Microsoft’s official site confirmed that IllumiRoom uses the Kinect sensor 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.’

This new technology will augment the area surround the television set with project visualisation to enhance the entertainment experience. The Kinect sensor is used to map the geometry of the room in question and helps to adapt the projected visuals ‘in real time’ to match the display of the console.

In the video demo shown at the conference, Microsoft showed off several different applications for this technology. They explained that the footage was ‘captured live and is not the result of any special effects added post production’.

IllumiRoom appears to be the realisation of the immersive display experience that Microsoft patented last year, which aimed to make gaming ‘more realistic’ but eliminating ‘out of context images’ that site next to your TV.

Whether or not IllumiRoom will tie-in with the next Xbox iteration of Kinect remains to be seen but Microsoft have already confirmed that more details will be revealed at the ACM SIGCHI Conference in Paris in April.