what school in socal? i live in socal.

MS got the money ;) but it does sound to be too good to be true

@thranx

Sorry I didn't follow up with my friend. I am kind of flabbergasted by the whole situation, and at the time nobody here seemed all that interested in following up on the lead. I honestly don't know where he is going with the whole thing. Whether he thinks he can find other sources to back up the story, or whether he was really that good of a friend with the guy. Anyway it is his job to find out after all, and if he does find some kind of hard evidence he might be making a article in a few days. Who knows.

@DanneSandin

I actually did a fair amount of research after listening to the interview, but I kept my speculations to myself since they weren't explicitly stated by the source. I honestly think that people are so caught up in the whole Holodeck concept. That they are overlooking that a built in projector could offer up a real force multiplier when it come to motion controls. After all if the projector could create images on floors or walls. Then the Kinect could allow for people to interact with those images.

The possibilities would be virtually endless. Not just for motion control games, but for core games as well. Oddly enough it doesn't even seem to be financially unfeasible either. This technology is becoming common in small portable devices. So it probably wouldn't add a great deal of cost to the overall device. I know people gripe that there would be surfaces it couldn't paint, but then again don't those same gripes hold true for Kinect already. It isn't like every room is big enough to play Kinect games in. This would actually be more convenient. All you need after all is just a big piece of black paper, and you could create any controller layout you so desired.

Anyway like I told my friend. Not only did it seem plausible, but it seems like the most logical solution to a real big problem. Namely that the Kinect isn't very useful as a game playing device. Interacting with projections would actually make the device more user friendly, and even developer friendly. Further more I think it is the future of the market, and that would only give Microsoft a incentive to create a product even if it is a intermediate one.

Yeah, if x3ox has projections it'll be as if Wii had a baby together with PS2; it'll be unstoppable!!

I thought Skittles ate Milo. What do I know.

I live in Southern California, but anyone walking on a school without a good reason - like to pick up your kid, could get in trouble with security.  I have teacher friends thought, so far they haven't reported anything back.  I'll check with some more.

Another rumour...

Isn't your friend refering to this kind of projection? This seems possible though I don't think the projector would be bundeled with Xbox 8.

http://www.theverge.com/2012/3/16/2876238/microsoft-beamatron-kinect-augmented-reality

@Jazz2K

What we have in this story is someone claiming to have seen what amounts to a tech demo. Which he interpreted as being a representation of Microsoft's next home console. Beyond that there is not enough information to draw any conclusions either specifically, or vaguely for that matter. Other then Microsoft may have progressed far enough with the technology to have it work in real world settings. We can't even be sure that it was official field testing that he was seeing. For all we know it could just be a demo that someone that worked for Microsoft decided to share with their friend. Who just so happened to be a teacher.

If it was indeed a projector that flashed the room. We have no evidence as to what kind of projector it was, or what it was truly capable of doing. Beyond putting out a good amount of light for a short period of time. If he had even seen the Kinect unit that was being used. Then we might have something to go off of, but seeing as he did not even get that. We can only draw a couple conclusions if we believe his story.

Firstly Microsoft's is indeed moving forward with the projector concept, and secondly it is working in a real world environment. We basically get some confirmation that things are still proceeding, and probably proceeding quite well. Which to be honest was expected. Given how quickly Microsoft moved ahead with Kinect. We are at least a couple years into the development cycle of the concept. Microsoft had prototype handheld devices a year ago.

http://www.electronista.com/articles/11/11/01/microsoft.shows.three.new.prototype.ar.projectors/

Anyway even if I don't believe his interpretation. I do believe he saw something. He just didn't see much of real importance. I mean if he was conning us. He would have given us enough to hang ourselves with. like telling us what the hardware looked like, or given us a run down of features. While it is pretty damned hard to disprove, or to prove for that matter. Even if we did the latter we wouldn't get much. Unless we could actually get up close, and personal with the hardware.

As for your second point. I can totally see Microsoft incorporating some kind of projector. Even if it is just for the sake of having a intermediate gimmick. After all Nintendo didn't go full bore with motion control, and neither did Microsoft with Kinect. I think it is less a question of whether it will be there. Just what it will be able to do. There is just too much tech on display to be thinking that Microsoft isn't planning to incorporate it into some device, and the Next Xbox probably needs a new gimmick.

I live in South Cali. Where is the school?