Article written by Peter Chapman.
Published on 11/09/2012 at 03:10 PM.
All those rumours about the Xbox 720 more closely integrating Kinect seem more and more likely every day. Gesture and voice control is finding its way into more and more of our devices but what about immersion? What about the size of your TV?
We’ve heard about Sony’s potential plans to pack its 4k tech into the PlayStation 4, with 4k resolution panels already in the wild. That could potentially see huge displays that retain a great quality image but it would essentially still make the television screen a window, framing your gameplay experience. Microsoft has filed a patent which could see that become less of an issue.
The filing, uncovered by PatentlyApple, shows a “future Xbox” working with Kinect to determine where in a space the player is. It then makes use of a 360 degree projector to bathe your walls in the luminescent glow of in-game scenes. The dodgy images attached to the patent show a forest and hillside scene surrounding a man playing what we assume is intended to be an FPS.
With many people still prohibited from using Kinect to the fullest of its abilities due to room size and light issues, this tech might be some way off being useful. It’s a weird idea, for sure, but one which has some potential to fill our peripheral vision with colour in a way that makes that window into our game – where our focus will naturally be fixed anyway – all the more immersive.
There might even be less obvious uses. Imagine driving around San Andreas at night time as the rain pours down and that little projector casts the moon high above your TV. The projector could then be used to shine into your eyes as the headlights of oncoming traffic dazzle you. It could be used to cast arrows to the left or right of your screen, removing the on-screen directional HUD on many third person games.
Source: PatentlyApple
Seems fairly useless to me. You’d need a large room, with white walls and nothing on them. Imagine the shadows cast by the user and anything else in the room.
A room with nothing but a TV and projector, every one’s got one of those…not. Yep useless to most folk I reckon.
If they did this, it would be ok as a little feature. Imagine if this was how you had to play games though! Would be absolutely rubbish.
This would be great for horror games.
Lol Gtfo MS
So… what’s the point in having the TV? This is another one of those weird patents that will never come to fruition in it’s original form. I see this as a multi-directional projector.
Wouldn’t it be easier to wear some sort of glasses? And weren’t they messing around with that about 20 years ago?
Looks ridiculous. I want one already
They have only patented this so that if it does happen in the next 40 years and somebody does it before them, they will dig out this dusty old patent and say ‘We already have this planned because we did a few draft drawings in out noteback, GET SUED’.
what?
something like this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGkV-_KWRTU
or this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTP32x3gCZ4&feature=plcp
or this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OztvpGk-JZ0&feature=plcp
I think they’re over-engineering a solution to the imersion problem. Surely a headset with a wrap around screen and sound would be just as effective (probably more so in fact), cheaper to produce, have less associated issues (furniture, walls etc as mentioned above) and more likely to appeal to serious gamers? And the drawings look like something my twelve-year-old knocked up!
Exactly, which makes it perfect for the MS marketing team… just look at the success they had with Kinect – which suffers most of the problems you’ve described.