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Peripheral projected illusions: Microsoft demos IllumiRoom Kinect idea in video

Beaming the bits you don't usually see onto living room walls.

Remember Microsoft's patented idea of projecting the bits of a gaming you don't see on your TV - the periphery - onto the walls and furniture of your living room?

The idea has materialised. It's known as IllumiRoom and it was shown in video at CES.

A small Microsoft Research team of four are credited with creating it, and it is still only a proof-of-concept design. IllumiRoom pairs Kinect for Windows with a projector to achieve its results.

"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," the MS Research team explained.

The videos (they're both very similar) apparently captured IllumiRoom running live rather than added it via special effects in post-production.

The videos show the cityscapes of shooters sprawl beyond the television and they show bullets and sparks and fires spill out into the room. The part I liked was the ambient snow effect in the room - imagine what exploring the wilds of Skyrim could be like!

More detailed details are apparently coming at the CHI 2013 event held in Paris on 27th April.

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