Microsoft IllumiRoom: gaming without borders

Microsoft's new gaming technology, called IllumiRoom, has finally been revealed in a proof-of-concept video that actually looks really cool.

(Screenshot by Michelle Starr/CNET Australia)

In September last year, a very linguistically convoluted patent called "Immersive Display Experience" was made publicly available for viewing. If you could get through the jargon, it described a system that turns your lounge (or other gaming room) into a full gaming environment using the Kinect sensor and a projector.

We were intrigued — and now, having seen Microsoft's proof-of-concept in action, we think it looks potentially amazing.

In a post on the Microsoft Research website, the company explained:

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.

More information on IllumiRoom will be coming at the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems from 27 April to 2 May, but in the meantime, Microsoft has released this shiny video.

If nothing else, we're exceptionally happy to see one of the major console manufacturers diverge in what they're developing, finally stepping out properly from behind Nintendo.