Microsoft's RoomAlive Gaming Jumps Out of the Box

Microsoft Research on Sunday demonstrated RoomAlive, a new technology that can transform any room into an immersive and interactive gaming display.

Based on a scalable multiprojector system that adapts gaming content to the physical space, RoomAlive allows users to touch, shoot, stomp, dodge and steer projected content that becomes seamlessly integrated with their environment.

A depth camera, wide-field-of-view projector and computer work together to cover the entire room, including the furniture and people present, dynamically mapping content based on room layout and user position. Pixels can be used both for input and output.

Currently a proof-of-concept prototype, RoomAlive is described in a paper presented by Microsoft and numerous academic collaborators at UIST 2014, the 27th Association for Computing Machinery Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology in Hawaii.

RoomAlive is an expansion of the technology used in the IllumiRoom projection system that Microsoft demonstrated last year.

While IllumiRoom used projectors to extend a TV image beyond the bounds of the screen to cover a whole wall, RoomAlive takes that notion a step further by turning every surface in a room into a reactive environment.

"I think this concept could be very compelling for game enthusiasts," Christine Arrington, a senior analyst for games with IHS, told TechNewsWorld.

"This is the kind of concept that console makers have to develop in order to make the hardware attractive to customers going forward," she said. "As game delivery continues to move towards digital distribution, the question of what the console hardware does for the gamer becomes more critical to answer."

Microsoft's demo videos suggest that "hardware makers are very focused on using in-home hardware to enhance the gaming experience, thereby keeping console hardware relevant even if the future Xbox may look very different than it does today," she added.

However, there are some challenges ahead for the concept, Arrington suggested.

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Microsoft's RoomAlive Gaming Jumps Out of the Box