Microsoft turns your whole room into the screen with IllumiRoom

Proving it has no intentions of stopping with the Kinect, Microsoft has released a demo of its latest game-augmenting peripheral, the IllumiRoom. This new display-based accessory apparently projects images onto adjacent walls to expand the viewing area beyond that of the television. Take a look below.

Some more fastidious perusers of Microsoft news may recognize this concept from patent images released last year. A key difference between the video and the patent illustration, however, is that the image portrays the player using the Kinect in conjunction with the IllumiRoom. Should this integration be realized, there may finally be a more comfortable solution to the problem of perspective in first-person Kinect titles.

Arguably one of the better aspects of this demonstration is that the IllumiRoom doesn’t just expand the display size to fit your wall space; the display aspects found outside the confines of your normal screen can either be a full expansion of the player’s viewing area, or can serve to simply augment the playing experience. In the latter case, explosions of particles may spray beyond the television’s boundaries, or weather effects can fill your room. The possibilities here are dizzying compared to the way we imagine perception in modern gaming.

The demonstration video is enough food for months of thought, which is good because we likely won’t hear much more about IllumiRoom until late April during the CHI 2013 conference in Paris. In the meantime, tell us what you want to see the IllumiRoom do.

[via GameInformer]