IllumiRoom: Making your room the screen

IllumiRoom: Peripheral Projected Illusions for Interactive Experiences is a proof-of-concept from Microsoft Research that was just announced at CES. The concept is to use a projector to bring the game outside of the television screen and into the room with you.

“Our system uses the appearance and the geometry of the room (captured by Kinect) to adapt the projected visuals in real-time without any need to custom pre-process the graphics. What you see in the videos below has been captured live and is not the result of any special effects added in post production.” 

I am intrigued by this idea because I think it adds more than just what one would get with a bigger tv screen. I have been thinking lately where the future of gaming would go visually be it 3D or something else like the Oculus Rift. A larger screen doesn’t let you see more of a game it only lets you see the same thing bigger and the Oculus Rift is limited to one person. I’ve seen projectors putting an image of a game onto a dome screen to give you peripheral vision and the ability to see “everything” around you as if you were in the world but that looked a little too much for me. I think the IllumiRoom is a more realistic and viable option for immersing yourself in the game. I’d assume there would be some sort of a projector on a tripod most likely so it has free range to project into the walls and ceiling of the room.

The best part is the fact that it doesn’t even need to be a good projector with a crisp image; it only needs to be something good enough to give you an idea of what is going on around you. I think the video shows some good examples of the immersion it could provide. I understand that this is just a concept and there are several things that could pose problems: you would have to be in a very dark room to get the best effect, you or other people in the room could block the projector, or if not everyone has access to this device it could pose an unfair advantage in multiplayer games. All those issue aside I really do like where Microsoft Research is going with innovative ideas. I would take this over a game tablet with bad integration any day. 

What do you think? Could you see yourself using something like this to get into the game or do you think it's just another gimmick?

There is more information and another video with the IllumiRoom on the Microsoft Research site here.