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Adinnieken on 11 September 2012
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Dallinor said:
Adinnieken said:
thehusbo said:
As cool as it looks, technology like this is still years off. It would be far too expensive for your average person anyway.

Yes, because Microsoft was incapable of taking technology that was still years off, and far too expensive for the average person and selling it for $150 with Kinect.

The basic technology involved here is a projector capable of displaying a 360° image.  Hardly a lot of sophisticated technology.

Well I think it would depend on how much tech and research currently exists for something like this or if MS are doing most of it internally. For Kinect for example MS had to licence camera technology from an Israli company, purchase a 3D video camera company and a semiconductor company to produce the 3D sensors to make Kinect a reality.

These companies had done research and development surrounding the Kinect hardware tech already, so it was simply a case of MS reaching out and making some aquisitions and hammering out deals to secure the hardware.

As for the software, Rare created that. So this time around Rare may be working on the new tech involved in this and perhaps the other aquisitions MS made have shifted development to this as well.

Either way, I would still imagine even the software required for something like this might be a few years off at least.

Edit: I made a few mistakes in my first post.

Yes and no.  According to prior documents, it's being released in 2014.  So it's still a couple of years off.  However, if Microsoft had the idea of how things worked back in 2010, then my guess is that they've been working on it actively. 

As for Rare working on this, my answer would be a definitive affirmative.  There was a job posting back in 2010 or 2011, after Kinect was released, looking for someone capable of working on 3D interfaces.  The belief at the time was that it was strictly related to Kinect, however nothing ever materialized.

I don't think Microsoft would have patented it unless it was something they already have worked out.  Whether it is perfected or not is a different story, but my guess is the software is likely 75% there.  Meaning it does everything they say it does in the patent, but it probably doesn't work as well as they'd like.  But that's my guess. 

As to Kinect, what you fail to realize is that behind Kinect were years of research into the same technology.  Microsoft was working on a completely different technology that was featured in the movie "The Island" but with the same principle of depth sensing the user.  It had years of experience working on voice recognition with Windows and Office, and subsequently was built into Ford Sync.  These technologies weren't something new to Microsoft.  I doubt 3D projection is new to Microsoft either. 

Not saying your wrong, you could be, just saying I don't necessarily agree that this is way off in the future.  I think Microsoft has every intention to bring it to market in 2014.