Microsoft Patent Details Whole-Room Projection Game Environment 118
Mackadoodledoo writes "Details of an immersive video games display system that projects images of the title's environment around a player's room have been revealed in a U.S. patent belonging to Microsoft."
Re:Graphics cave (Score:4, Interesting)
CAVEs, or CAVE Automatic Virtual Environment, come with devices called trackers. One tracker is located on a pair of shutter glasses that the user wears. This one tracks the location of your head, which then adjusts the screens for distortion. The other tracker is located in a device called a Wanda, which is much like a Wii-mote but about 100 times more accurate. The trackers use a magnetic field that fills not just the sides of the CAVE screens it self (10x10x10 foot cube), but beyond that.
Microsoft's innovation appears to be that it does the same thing, but with just one projector, that uses the walls around the room for peripheral vision - a highly useful feature (just ask any hardcore FPS gamer who has changed his FOV setting). It's probably not as accurate or as pretty, and it's likely going to be somewhere below the half a million you need to build a legitimate CAVE.
Sincerely,
Former University of Arkansas at Little Rock CAVE lab assistant