Microsoft’s IllumiRoom 2.0: RoomAlive Turns Any Living Room Into a Holodeck

Microsoft showed off Illumiroom back at last year’s CES expo, and it got a lot of attention prior to the company’s reveal for the Xbox One. The proof of concept showed a projection system that connected to an Xbox to project an Xbox game environment onto nearby walls, but now Microsoft has gone and upped themselves.

Featured above, the company has revealed IllumiRoom 2.0: RoomAlive, or what they’re calling RoomAlive for short. The new proof of concept is basically an extension of what we saw before, only now the system renders a complete 3D map of your entire living room (or what have you) and then allows game developers to have fun with it.


Examples were shown with whack-a-moles popping up all over the room, or bugs appearing all over the various surfaces, and so on. The 3D map is generated by the series of Kinect sensors and then spit into the Unity 3D engine, to which they’re later displayed via the projectors.

Unfortunately, the cost of running a set up like this is rather expensive, so for now Microsoft isn’t looking to sell you six Kinect sensors and six projectors. However, they have hopes that eventually the cost of this technology and hardware will both come down, and become smaller/simpler.

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