Not too long ago, Microsoft introduced its grand, pie-in-the-sky plans to maybe, someday turn your entire wall into an extension of your TV screen. Now, Microsoft Research has dropped some new details about how it all would work, and it’s shaping up to be pretty awesome.
The IllumiRoom would take the physical form of a small, wide-angle projection box that would sit on your coffee table, facing the TV. From there, it would feed off all kinds of information — from tapping right into a game’s source code, to reading raw controller input — to apply all manner of effects.
On the developer side, IllumiRoom would offer a wide variety of options from blowing out the whole screen to the walls, letting just explosions and gunshots bleed onto the nearby walls, having objects seem to fall off the screen and onto the floor, adding abstract reality-warping effects, or any combination of the above.
While we’ve got a little more detail here about how this tech would be applied, it’s still just a Microsoft Research project, and the information we’re getting is pretty high-level and conceptual. Even so, it’s a neat take on goggle-less virtual reality that could prove to be seriously awesome in the right hands. Here’s to hoping we see some prototypes in actually reality soon. [Microsoft IllumiRoom via The Verge]