Microsoft wants to turn your lounge into a Holodeck

A patent filed by Microsoft describes technology that will convert your space into a full 3D gaming environment.

It's like Fahrenheit 451's parlour walls or Star Trek's Holodeck — a fully interactive gaming environment created by projectors and controlled via Kinect. In a patent named "Immersive Display Experience", filed in March of last year and published earlier this month, Microsoft detailed a configuration that will turn your lounge into a full gaming environment.

Images show the environment projected onto the walls of the room by a projector, with a player standing in the middle and a Kinect controller translating the action in a concept that puts the Xbox 720 road map to shame.

The above image is described:

In the embodiment shown in FIG. 1, environmental display 116 is a projection display device configured to project a peripheral image in a 360-degree field around environmental display 116. In some embodiments, environmental display 116 may include one each of a left-side facing and a right-side facing (relative to the front-side of primary display 104) wide-angle RGB projector. In FIG. 1, environmental display 116 is located on top of primary display 104, although this is not required. The environmental display may be located at another position proximate to the primary display, or in a position away from the primary display.

That is, the projector extends the image shown on the flat-panel television into the room beyond. The patent also goes on to discuss the possibility of glasses-free 3D through the use of lenticular technology, and the application of stereoscopic technology, which involves glasses.

You can read more here, and if you don't give up before you hit halfway, we commend you. This is the patent abstract:

A data-holding subsystem holding instructions executable by a logic subsystem is provided. The instructions are configured to output a primary image to a primary display for display by the primary display, and output a peripheral image to an environmental display for projection by the environmental display on an environmental surface of a display environment, so that the peripheral image appears as an extension of the primary image.

What?