A whole 3D world in your living room: Will Smart Dust (in the future) ensure that your house can respond to your emotions?
- Microsoft’s ‘Kinect’ sensor, coupled with range of projectors, could convert living room into virtual world
- Technology would likely revolutionise conference calls and business use
Microsoft’s team of researchers is looking to transform your living room into a futuristic Star Trk-style ‘Holodeck’.
In these images, revealed by a patent application published last month, Microsoft unveiled its vision for its future game consoles – but instead of watching the action through a typical computer monitor or TV, your walls come alive with the action.
The technology will use Microsoft’s Kinect sensor – which currently lets you control games by waving your hands at the television – to map out your room and your location within it, before a range of video projectors overlay a full and immersive 3D world over your surroundings.
So, instead of turning your TV on to play computer games, your whole living room – plant pots and all – could be transformed into a full 3D world from which you can hunt aliens on a distant planet or take part in epic Westerns.
Patently Apple, which reports on innovations by Apple and its competitors, spotted the patent application this week.
The Kinect will also be able to recognise the furniture in your room, either incorporating chairs and tables directly into the game, or masking them by adapting the video output to render the items invisible.
It conjures up an image where a gamer could literally turn around in their living room to see an enemy sneaking up behind them.
The Kinect has been one of Microsoft’s runaway successes of the last few years, beginning life as an accessory for the company’s Xbox games console.
Instead of being tied to a controller, players could use their body to control the action in a myriad ways – for instance virtually pulling back a bow and arrow, or dancing as the console rated how good (or bad) you are at copying on-screen celebrities.