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Why has Microsoft's IllumiRoom not picked up more interest?

It's a proof of concept that is a hard sell because it involves selling an extra piece of hardware that is essentially a projector. So how do you bring a projector price down that much for something that is ultimately periphery to your experience?
 
It doesn't seem like it has much practical uses except for weather effects really.

Honestly VR is the endgame for gimmicks. All gimmicks are made around immersion and VR is the ultimate form of that. I don't see how anything can surpass the immersion that comes from having all your vision being the game and being able to look around and with motion controllers be able to have movement too.

Why would I want to pay more for a gimmicky impractical projector when I can buy a probably cheaper VR headset that will figuratively put me right into the game world and let me look around and even turn around to see behind me in 360 degrees.
 
loaf of bread said:
Honestly VR is the endgame for gimmicks. All gimmicks are made around immersion and VR is the ultimate form of that. I don't see how anything can surpass the immersion that comes from having all your vision being the game and being able to look around and with motion controllers be able to have movement too.

Why would I want to pay more for a gimmicky impractical projector when I can buy a probably cheaper VR headset that will figuratively put me right into the game world and let me look around and even turn around to see behind me in 360 degrees.
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actually I see VR as enabling more gimmicks,see Cyberith Virtualizer, Virtuix Omni, STEM, control VR.

At this rate of acceleration, within 3 years all known matter in the universe will be devoted to VR gimmick kickstarters.
 
d0g_bear said:
actually I see VR as enabling more gimmicks,see Cyberith Virtualizer, Virtuix Omni, STEM, control VR.

At this rate of acceleration, within 3 years all known matter in the universe will be devoted to VR gimmick kickstarters.
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VR will of course continue to advance but I can't see anymore stand-alone gimmicks being created if VR takes off as they just won't compare.
 
As someone with a projector setup, any projector setup is too much for any modern family. It is a silly idea and would never get far, not only requiring a excellent setup install wise, low light, plenty of space, and 0 WAF (wife approval factor). It was dead the second they showed it.
 
It's a neat little gimmick, but that's it. It would never be practical in my house, and I think I'd tire of it before I even would get the credit card bill.
 
Because it is a bloody impractical gimmick? If you can afford to have a projector purely to use for ambient visual effects, then you probably already have a screen large enough that you don't really need ambient effects. And if this was the first projector you bought, just use that for your main display

Not to mention hat you need a second kinect pointing forwards to scan the wall so it can adapt the projection to account for furniture etc.

So you now have a projector and a kinect sitting next to you while you play..
 
They dropped it when they realized that it would be prohibitively expensive as a retail product at this time. It is really cool though. Hopefully the components are cheaper when the Xbox Two comes along in a few years.
 
blazeuk said:
Even if everyone had enough space for such a thing in their house (which they don't), the task of convincing them to buy an expensive projector for something like this is just too much of an ask.
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Projectors have come way down in price, and you don't necessarily need high-resolution or clearly focused images to get affect out of this (though one of the problems is that you need to carve out the screen in the light projection for the TV, and even with an awesome LED projector you're not going to get a pure black square in the middle of your thrown lights.) As a home accessory, I could see it being a high-end-but-not-overly-extravagant item equivalent to a decent surround sound system (and given the lull in that market, I feel like hardware manufacturers would be curious to have a new product if Microsoft pushed it for them.) TV lighting enhancement is something I think is going to pick up interest as manufacturers come up dry with 3D and 4K, it would have been nice if Microsoft was on the vanguard of pushing tech like this.

That all being said, the real issue for me is that the complex and crazy-valuable effect, the Full Context effect that projects even more gameplay image all around, would take horsepower out of the game machine to process it. It'd take your entire living room and turn it into the game (with the HDTV at the center being the main focus, thus not needing great detail on the periphery while still providing scope and awareness,) but it'd require similar pixel rendering time to a second monitor.

I like the other effects and think a few of them would provide nice gameplay enhancement (even the Ambilight and other similar effects give some extra situation awareness or sensory feedback in play) but you're not going to really get the full gameplay leg-up unless the game is designed to collaborate with the accessory, and that may never be standardized if even supported.
 
Because from a gameplay perspective it would be even less useful than Kinect and even more gimmicky.

Then there's the valid expense and niche arguements.
 
Arabian Mage said:
Because holy fuck this would be waaaaay too distracting to me.
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The point is supposed to be that it's involving rather than distracting. It would give take advantage of your peripheral vision while your center focus is clear as normal. So you wouldn't look at all the stuff projected all around, but you'd have a sense of it in your periphery. You wouldn't know exactly who's coming up on you from the side, but you'd see them charging before they ever showed up on your screen.

In practice, however, you may be right that the sensory input may be distracting. With a VR device, you can always swing your head to look at the guy charging, plus it'll be clear when your vision gets there just as it is in real life, but with Illumiroom you have this disconnect where you see something in the periphery but to react to it you have to move the camera with your thumbstick and you don't want to shift your gaze as you really would because they sharp detail is on the screen.

(I'm actually curious what research they got out of their testing, because tricks like Selective Focus and Context Edges and even Radial Wobble might give more comfortable and valuable gameplay context with minimal/selective application than the full-blown screen extension effect.)

EGM1966 said:
Because from a gameplay perspective it would be even less useful than Kinect and even more gimmicky.
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Nope, watch the Illumiroom videos. Some effects are hoaky, but having peripheral vision added to your gameplay experience would be a tremendous addition to the sensory experience of gaming.

Some effects are hoaky, but having peripheral vision added to your gameplay experience would be a tremendous addition to the sensory experience of gaming. In a FPS, for example, if you could see more of the battlefield and could get an sense of positioning and threats all around in front of you (and remember, the surrounding image doesn't need to be a perfect extension, it can be for example a fisheye-squeezed overview of your surroundings, or it could be heat signatures or shadows projected outside your primary view, or it can show tracer fire or impact hits; it could even support multiple projectors like a Ferrari F355 Challenge arcade cabinet if they felt like going crazy ) while still having a razor-sharp center view where you are aiming, you would have a leg up on your competition, and that is no gimmick.

fc_edges.jpg


Not unlike surround-sound audio, surround-image video is technology that could offer great gameplay enhancement.
 
I always thought it looked awesome. The problem is it's just a prototype and will probably never come out, so it's hard to be excited about it.
 
It would be so much fun to try. Not that interested in the projections outside the screen, but the effect of making the room "flash" is amazing
 
I'm not sure how much it adds to the gameplay experience besides some added visual flourishes on the periphery of my vision. I don't think there are many gameplay implications for this tech and it's probably too expensive to be worthwhile for MS.
 
Yoda said:
I really thought this idea was cool, too bad it wasn't practical from a cost point of view.
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If you think about it, it's actually a cheaper way of adding more gameplay image value. Buying a bigger HDTV is going to be a jump in cost for every inch and yet it's still not going to make a tremendous difference unless you buy a HUGE one that consumes your view from your couch (a movie screen can barely take up that much of your sight and it's several feet in diameter; I have a 70" monster TV and even from my couch, it feels "normal" to me now, it's not a consuming experience.) With Illumiroom, you don't need to throw away what you have to get more out of it. Plus, the image 'frame' that it projects does not need to be as clear or bright or detailed as the main image because you will not be experiencing it but for your peripheral vision (it'd be a better and smarter value to pay for a really high-quality HDTV at the size you're comfortable with and then accentuating it with Peripheral Projected Illusions than it would be to get the biggest TV you can find to fit whatever wall you can fit it on, and then hope it matches up in quality to what you could get for the same price at a more reasonable size... plus you have to mount the bastard and that ain't fun.)

Compared to a VR device, Illumiroom or other Peripheral Projection devices are also more practical (how often and for how long do you really think you'll be slapping a helmet on to play games?) and should be significantly less nauseating because there shouldn't be any motion sickness and minimal sensory disconnect.

Illumiroom itself might be going too far, though. (Although it might be worth looking at the other side, that the Ambilight technology isn't grabbing people and is also susceptible to post-processing lag, so maybe it'll take some amazing implementation like this to get the market going?) The need for a projector and a Kinect-style camera is a lot for one gadget (though again, I'm not sure most effects need full 3D scanning or realtime feedback?), and the installation assumptions might be very difficult to account for in a mass-market device. (My TV is mounted in a corner of the room, for example, what the heck would this rig do with those darned right angles?) Microsoft was smart to deem this impractical, though I still wish the project was still alive.

BTW, the thousands-of-dollars consumer cost is I'm assuming coming in from needing a projector with resolution and contrast high enough in quality that the HDTV in the center of the screen is not blown out by glare? Otherwise, an LCD projector by itself isn't a ridiculous cost (LED would be better but much more,) adding a camera to it isn't necessarily a big issue (though if it really does need a Kinect then that's more,) the ceiling-mount can be pulled off for not much more than a hundred bucks and some handiman know-how, and you're actually saving over a regular projection set-up because you don't need a silverized screen to mount, your regular walls and cabinets do the job. (You'd also need to run wires or have a wireless projector, both of which are going to slam the mass-market possibilities.) For what MS showed, I could see it be a grand or even two, but those who are looking at this as tech for the Silver Spoons kid are I think overestimating the technology. In fact, I bet as projection tech improves we'll see more indie ideas that capitalize on what MS is abandoning (though again, without integration from the game, you're always going to have lag and lesser-value generic effects.)
 
I read somewhere that Microsoft said it was just a test and required several thousand $ worth of hardware and special circumstances.

Not suitable as a consumer product.

Edit:
Here:
Albert Penello said: "I wouldn't expect you'll see that. It's very, very cool tech but it's, like, for a consumer, it requires projectors and things. It's really super-neat if you're in the lab and you've got Microsoft money and you could totally set up this awesome lab, but for an average customer it's, like, thousands of dollars [for the set up]."

http://www.computerandvideogames.co...llumiroom-too-expensive-for-consumer-release/
 
Poodlestrike said:
You'd still need the room scanning for color and perspective correction.
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Uh no? Maybe like the rich version, but I'm pretty sure it would work like most budget projectors where you just can choose a setting for the colors and perspective correct isn't all that pricey now if they did include it.

But you people are talking like it is supposed to be a high end hd projector instead of just cool lighting atmosphere. It is just there to bring lights off the screen for your peripheral vision. Not supposed to be all that high-end of an idea at all.
 
Agent AA1 said:
When I first saw it, I was impressed. I still am, but I know it probably will never get released because it would be niche product
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Inorigo said:
They said themselves they're not really pursuing it because of how niche it is.
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If it's basically two Xbox 360s - one on the TV and the other on a projector - linked with two Kinects, then all MS needs to pony up is the software. Let the market take advantage of this if they have the means, no matter how niche it is. Just release it. After all, this was the same company that let people link six Xboxes in single-player for the original Forza.

I would totally do this.
 
Zukuu said:
I doubt it would be that expensive. It's basically a beamer that doesn't need to have such a high resolution. Drop the room scanning and other stuff. Just make it like this:
Akk7bN.gif

The setup isn't that uncommon. You either install it like a beamer to a wall behind you, or put it on a table and align with with your TV. The only thing I see as a problem is that it would need to communicate with the console / TV, so it's a bit bothersome to connect probably. Needs wifi / bluetooth.
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Maybe I'm weird but I honestly don't get the appeal of this.
Lights and shit going off around the TV? What's the big deal? And for the price it would go for, just doesn't seem worth it at all.
 
Sakura said:
Maybe I'm weird but I honestly don't get the appeal of this.
Lights and shit going off around the TV? What's the big deal? And for the price it would go for, just doesn't seem worth it at all.
Click to expand...

It's like the lights in the game are in the room. It's cool. I'd love being chased in GTA V and seeing the helicopter's spotlight migrate off the screen and along my walls.
 
It looks cool, but it's hard to get excited about things that are expensive, early in development and require a very specific setup.

Show me some cool usermade videos of regular people using it in their homes and we'll talk. Positive word of mouth among core users is how you create grassroots hype (also see: VR/Oculus).
 
Seems the primary benefit is simply increased FOV, something VR gives at a lower price point, with better immersion and no external factors (lighting. room color, distances), plus VR has other stuff like stereoscopy and head-tilt view control. I have no idea why anyone would pursue this when VR is already making highly effective devkits.
 
It's pretty cool but looks like something for people that have a lot of extra cash.

As it is now, if I actually have money to invest in my gaming setup I'd rather buy better audio equipment, a bigger TV, more games/controllers or upgrading my PC. I'd also be more willing to invest in a Oculus Rift than this
 
Someone from ms already said it would cost the average consumer 1000's of dollars. So it isn't feasible at all. Not yet anyway.

Edit: beaten by 1.21 gigawatts
 
feel like it would get kind of annoying after a while... but maybes that just me.


maybe for single player immersion it could work, but for MP games I think it would just be a distraction.
 
My reaction to the reveal video was almost physical; like someone standing right in front of me with a nasty sickness...who then sneezes in my face.
Illumiroom looks like a big annoying gimmick. Then I saw Morpheus VR, and Illumiroom then looked even more ridiculous.
 
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