Microsoft Bringing Augmented Reality to the Living Room With IllumiRoom for Xbox [VIDEO]

Microsoft will be releasing their next generation gaming console in the near future, and will possibly announce the release date this June for the Xbox 720.

With already developed add-on devices like the Kinect bringing gamers into the virtual world that they are playing, a new development, still in the research  stage, called IllumiRoom may take that game immersion to the next level.

IllumiRoom will work with the Kinect and a projector to scan the room you are playing in and then project visuals onto the surrounding surfaces. This will extend your field of vision to include items not on your TV screen. The results look incredible as you will see in the un-cut video below. Digital snow falling in your living room or the city streets projected onto your walls to make it seem as if you are the character in the game. Pretty amazing stuff.

IllumiRoom is a proof-of-concept system from Microsoft Research. It augments the area surrounding a television screen with projected visualizations to enhance the traditional living room entertainment experience.

IllumiRoom uses a Kinect for Windows camera and a projector to blur the lines between on-screen content and the environment we live in allowing us to combine our virtual and physical worlds. For example, our system can change the appearance of the room, induce apparent motion, extend the field of view, and enable entirely new game experiences.