Microsoft Research shows off IllumiRoom Xbox project at CES 2013

[SvennoJ]

kain_kusanagi said:

SvennoJ said:
Yup looks great as a demo.

It won't work in my living room as I have a big window next to the tv, and paintings on the wall with glass frames. Nor do I have anywhere to put a projector in there.

I already have a projector in a dedicated room, but there I rather have it project onto a 92" screen instead of sticking a smaller tv in the middle. Plus the walls are dark in that room on purpose, to limit ambient light washing out darker details on the screen.

If you're going to spend money on a projector, wouldn't you want to use it for a big screen experience in the first place?

You're making a lot of assumptions. The system probably has it's own small inexpensive projector with some kind of 3D room scanner that's probably based on Kinect tech. I doubt MS would ask people to buy an expensive projector just to add ambient effects to their TV room.

As for your room, I don't really see a problem. This tech isn't for projecting HD video onto walls. It is for expanding the experience to fill the room with effects. You'll close the shades on your Windows and turn down the lights and let the system cover your room with ambient effects to help emerse yourself into the game. That's why most of what you saw in the video was about adding motion and color to the room rather than blowing up the video to fill the room.

Well I don't have shades on the windows near the tv (nor on the glass picture frames), nor would it work on the dark cloth grills of the speaker towers. But sure for effects it would be pretty cool, depending on price, size and flexibility in placement of the projector.

There must be a pretty powerful lamp in that projector to cover the whole room like that while projecting onto surfaces not made for projection. I guess for motion effects you can get away with a 800x600 2700 Lumens BenQ MS502 with a special wide angle lens. That would set you back about $330 for the projector.