Microsoft’s RoomAlive Makes Your Living Room The Next Video Game Level [VIDEO]

The next best thing in video games may not be coming to your computer or tv but instead to your walls. RoomAlive, a new concept prototype from Microsoft uses projectors and computer imaging to make the room you are playing in into the setting for a game. If you watch the video explanation, it's pretty rad to see people shooting at robots on their wall, avoiding traps out to get them, and even finding secret openings right there in their living room!

Microsoft explains RoomAlive like this:

RoomAlive is a proof-of-concept prototype that transforms any room into an immersive, augmented entertainment experience. Our system enables new interactive projection mapping experiences that dynamically adapts content to any room. Users can touch, shoot, stomp, dodge and steer projected content that seamlessly co-exists with their existing physical environment. The basic building blocks of RoomAlive are projector-depth camera units, which can be combined through a scalable, distributed framework. The projector-depth camera units are individually auto-calibrating, self-localizing, and create a unified model of the room with no user intervention. We investigate the design space of gaming experiences that are possible with RoomAlive and explore methods for dynamically mapping content based on room layout and user position. Finally we showcase four experience prototypes that demonstrate the novel interactive experiences that are possible with RoomAlive and discuss the design challenges of adapting any game to any room.

It looks pretty cool, but obviously has a lot more development to go through before it's in your home. One thing they didn't take into account that is maybe an added bonus: If you've ever tortured a cat with a laser pointer, this will be that times 1000!