Microsoft Research shows off RoomAlive gaming concept

Microsoft's Research division published a video clip that shows off RoomAlive, a proof-of-concept prototype of a gaming system that turns any room into an immersive, augmented reality entertainment experience. RoomAlive projects scenes on your walls that you can interact with or shoot at. Microsoft says the system automatically calculates the entire 3D geometry of a room in minutes, it uses multiple projectors, several Kinect cameras and a control device.

It's basically a much more advanced version of the IllumiRoom concept that was shown early last year, which Microsoft deemed way too expensive to launch.

RoomAlive is a proof-of-concept prototype that transforms any room into an immersive, augmented entertainment experience. Our system enables new interactive projection mapping experiences that dynamically adapts content to any room. Users can touch, shoot, stomp, dodge and steer projected content that seamlessly co-exists with their existing physical environment. The basic building blocks of RoomAlive are projector-depth camera units, which can be combined through a scalable, distributed framework. The projector-depth camera units are individually auto-calibrating, self-localizing, and create a unified model of the room with no user intervention. We investigate the design space of gaming experiences that are possible with RoomAlive and explore methods for dynamically mapping content based on room layout and user position. Finally we showcase four experience prototypes that demonstrate the novel interactive experiences that are possible with RoomAlive and discuss the design challenges of adapting any game to any room.