Room Alive: Another Way to Play

Image resolution has improved exponentially throughout history. From the dreaded and ugly 8 bit characters to 4K ultra HD images of anything from frames of reality to awesome, detailed, hyper realistic computer generated images. But despite the sharp and clean graphics today, we are unable to interact with them, to touch or, virtually, change the image projected. Instead, we are left to admire those images through our eyes only, through visual stimulation. Sure, our society has developed new way to display images, such as holograms, but they are relatively too expensive and quite impractical. But for researchers from Microsoft's R&D, they have developed a system capable of allowing the player to interact the images within the game, but is quite impractical. The system is called RoomAlive, which consists of six procams, a projector with a Microsoft Kinect attached to it. The system uses projection mapping, projecting the images on various walls in the room while the Kinect sensors detect the motion of the persons in the room and determines what effect that motion has on the image. There are four interactive games optimized with this system, Setting the Stage, Whack-a-Mole, Robot Attack, and Traps, but the system is unavailable for consume purchase as the cost of actually buying all six procams, and having them properly installed in one's room for optimized visual experience is very expensive and impractical as many of the games that come with RoomAlive are simple and repetitive, but it does foreshadow the rise of new gaming systems that will dominate over the "sit down, stare, and play" method of gaming. To see more about RoomAlive, click the following link: http://www.gizmag.com/roomalive-living-room-video-game/34176/