IllumiRoom To Take Gaming Visuals Outside the Box and Onto the Living Room 60
cylonlover writes "At CES in January, Microsoft Research teased its IllumiRoom concept, which involves projecting an image around a TV screen to enhance video games with additional visuals. Unfortunately, the company didn't offer much info beyond a short video that briefly showed it in action. But the team behind the project recently showed up at the CHI 2013 conference in Paris with some more in-depth details about how IllumiRoom will not only expand the game screen, but completely alter the appearance of your living room."
No thanks. (Score:2, Insightful)
I think I speak for most gaming enthusiasts when I say "focus on hardware that will be more robust for a better part of this next generation and the games that will be on it and skip the gimmicks".
Re: (Score:3)
You certainly speak for me on this issue.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
He doesn't think he speaks for most gaming enthusiasts? How do you know? Can you read minds? Cool!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I don't mind folks trying to make a game more immersive, but I think that these guys missed a boat that sailed a good few years back. I think the next major step in immersive gameplay will be a 3D headset coupled with whatever that funny 360 degree slippery treadmill thingy that was on the site a few days ago. That made me a heck of a lot more interested than having a crappy projector sitting in the same area as me.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Too bad the lack of marketing, platform integration, exclusive content (as well as general multi-plat form general content) and perceived "high" price will most likely kill those devices. If they survive they end up being niches even smaller than other computer gaming peripherals like steering wheels or fighting/flying joysticks.
Now this is just silly! If you have not played a racing game with a force feedback steering wheel, then you don't know how much better they make the game. Little fucking joysticks that vibrate don't give you the control that turning a wheel does. When you drive you are constantly making fine tune adjustments to the wheel to keep the car on the exact track you want. And the force feedback for driving is more than just same stupid vibration. It gives you a feel for the traction your wheels have on the road, m
Re: (Score:2)
I'm NOT talking about how all these accessories improve gaming. As a dedicated gamer myself I know first hand how these accessories can improve the experience from both a gameplay and immersion point of view.
I'm talking about BUSINESS. Steering wheels et al. can be as good as you can imagine, without support, platform integration, marketing, exclusive content etc, all these accessories will be a niche market. Being a good product alone does not guarantee success.
As quick exam
Re: No thanks. (Score:2)
I agree its a few years old. I tried to do this 5 years ago bit got stuck on the rendering a larger view area at lower resolution overlapping but not including the main focal point. I saw in their last demo they used opensource game and must have resolved this issue. but I was trying for a more generic approach and actually thinking only of a desktop view
Re: (Score:2)
Here's the thing. No one is gonna buy a 360 degree slippery treadmill to play games. Not any time soon anyway. It's just not going to happen. Very few people are even gonna buy 3D headsets, the dork factor is just too high and the inability to play/watch with friends and family without everyone having hardware breaks it even more (and that's coming from someone who is legitimately excited about the technology). Remember, although the average gamer is a 25-35 year old male, there are still a lots and lot
Re: (Score:2)
I think I speak for most gaming enthusiasts when I say "focus on hardware that will be more robust for a better part of this next generation and the games that will be on it and skip the gimmicks".
Oh, we assure you that the TPM will be plenty robust, we've been working extra hard on that part!
Re: (Score:1)
I'm not sure about the success of the Wii. Huge sales numbers certainly, but I know ours was collecting dust, until the Wii-U came around and disappointed us.
We didn't even buy an XBox 360. After they had been on the market for years, we received one as a gift (from someone who received it as a gift but already had one). It came with the Kinect. We didn't use it much. The kid wanted Kinectimals. Doesn't play it. We played a few downloadable XBox exclusive games, otherwise haven't really used it. There is on
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No thanks. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No thanks. (Score:5, Insightful)
No. Just... No. That demo absolutely rocked, and I would buy that in a frickin' heartbeat if it actually works as shown there.
And I say that as someone who already uses a projector as my "TV" screen - But while it works well for field of vision, it fails in that you can either sit close and have low resolution at the center of your vision, or further away and you effectively get a similar angular size as a TV up close except you don't need to sit on top of the screen. Something that combines both - A bright, high-res macular view, combined with an immersive peripheral field? Awesome. Simple awesome.
Hate all you want, but as a long-time Nintendo fan, that would count as my first XBox.
Yes please. (Score:1)
I'm also very carefull and wait to see if anyone will make good use of them but this one in particular seems to have much more
Re: (Score:2)
As a gaming enthusiast, I have to say that I've been looking into building my own system that's simpler than this and more similar to what Phillips did with their Ambilight [wikipedia.org] system, since there are a few open-source methods for doing so that have already been developed, but I'd love it if something even more advanced, such as this MS system, were available. My only issue is that all of the current ways of doing it (at least as far as I know) require that the signal originate from a PC that outputs separate v
and get off my lawn! (Score:3)
Really? Because this is from MS this is uncool?
This, plus kinnect, could be the interface of the future. Install it on the ceiling and you could project a video or keyboard on any flat surface. Never have to look for a remote again. Need a calculator, a recipe, a note pad, facebook, etc?
Re: (Score:2)
If future versions scale in usability the way that personal computers have, I could see a Kinect style device in most rooms of the house connecting features that we haven't even
Re: (Score:2)
Really? Because this is from MS this is uncool?
This, plus kinnect, could be the interface of the future. Install it on the ceiling and you could project a video or keyboard on any flat surface. Never have to look for a remote again. Need a calculator, a recipe, a note pad, facebook, etc?
It looks promising for enhancing the immersion value of relatively small screens; but as an interface it would have to be taken in very small doses. Anyone remember those so damn sci-fi you think that the future just travelled back in time and punched you in the face [thinkgeek.com] laser projection keyboards? They suck. Horribly. The ghastliest laptop you've ever had to touch would feel like a Model M, even after spilling something sticky on it, compared to one of those.
For a few big buttons that you only need occasionall
Re: (Score:2)
Touchscreen keyboards are also pretty horrid; but the amount of difference that a little haptic buzz, along with on-screen visual feedback and sophisticated autocorrect, makes is significant. Laser projection keyboards are markedly worse.
Re: (Score:2)
You could do haptic feedback and the rest with a laser projection keyboard! It would still suck though.
Re: (Score:2)
I never used one of those, but I can imagine that hammering your fingers at typing speed onto a hard surface would be quite painfull after a few minutes. (you can't touch type on touch screens, so you're not getting your fingers on full speed there)
That's pretty interesting, but.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Cool? Definitely. Improve the gaming experience? More than likely. Reality? Not even remotely close.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, Microsoft Research comes up with cool ideas and the end-result is a press release (and that's the last you hear of it). Apple Research comes up with cool ideas and they sit in a secret filing cabinet until the technology becomes viable to bring to market, maybe some 10 years later. The first you hear about it is the finished product.
Re: (Score:1)
Official list of product contributions: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/about/techtransfer/default.aspx [microsoft.com]
Re: (Score:3)
This is Microsoft research. They do come up with cool things,
Sure they do (Microsoft Songsmith) [youtube.com]
how about for serious work? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not a game player, but I do enjoy jumping around like a moron. With or without a kinect. OTOH I don't enjoy my upstairs neighbors jumping around like morons, so you may have a point there.
Re: (Score:1)
My upstairs neighbors are bats. They're relatively quiet, though sometimes they make some noise up there. When we had the roof replaced a year ago, the previous upstairs neighbors, a family of racoons (seemingly a new litter every spring from the sound of it) were evicted.
Human upstairs neighbors? That must suck.
Shut up... (Score:3)
movie and music application? (Score:2, Interesting)
Since I'm not a gamer, I can't speak for it's desirability in gaming. But I think I can see a niche use for something like this when I notice the "ripple your room" effect mentioned in the slideshow. I like a lot of bass heavy music (yes my neighbour hates me, thanks for asking), I think it'd be cool to have the room appear to quiver in a subtle way in time with the kick drums or long bass guitar solos. For that matter; think of the iconic water ripple scene in Jurassic park. Imagine your room rippling when
Re:movie and music application? (Score:4, Funny)
think it'd be cool to have the room appear to quiver in a subtle way in time with the kick drums or long bass guitar solos.
That technology has been around for ages. It's called magic mushrooms.
Re: (Score:2)
While this version isn't subtle enough, I could imagine a better version of this projector replacing all lighting if technology advances in the right way. Pseudo-holographic lighting. Subtly change the "flavour" of the room, give the best lighting for specific objects without affecting the rest of the room, and without having something as obvious as spot-lights/highlights/downlights. Or dramatically change the apparent wall and furniture patterns/textures.
[TFA showed hints with the projection-lighting on th
illumiwhat? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I too would much prefer an Oculus Rift for single-player and online gaming. However, there's no way I'm buying several of them for gaming with my friends, besides the cost it sort of defeats the point of gaming in the same room if you're totally cut off from each other except during breaks. Come to think of it though Illumiroom wouldn't be much better - some of the lighting and special effects and such might be workable with split-screen, but I'm not dishing out more than a few bucks for gimmicks, and fran
Did you notice the distance required? (Score:1)
Does ANYONE sit 15 feet away from the TV when playing games or working on a computer? This would be awesome if I didn't have to sit so far from the screen that I need binoculars to make out the HUD.
Re: (Score:2)
Playing games? Yes. Have the Wii and media center computer both connected to a TV about 15 feet from the couch. But I don't play FPS games.
They misspelled SuperTuxKart (Score:1)
Nice to see Microsoft is using open source games to show the capabilities of their system. It's a bit disappointing to see that they misspelled SuperTuxCart (sic) in the YouTube video.