Microsoft Researchers envision spicing up boring meetings by surrounding you with projectors

Microsoft Researchers are presenting a new method to easily share content in meetings using multiple projectors and depth sensors to immerse meeting goers in their presentations.

MeetAlive is a Room-Scale Omni-Directional Display System for Multi-User Content and Control Sharing being presented by Andreas Rene Fender, Hrvoje Benko, Andy Wilson at the ISS 2017 – ACM International Conference on Interactive Surfaces and Spaces.

It combined combines multiple depth cameras and projectors to create a room-scale omnidirectional display surface designed to support collaborative face-to-face group meetings.

With MeetAlive, all participants may simultaneously display and share content from their personal laptop wirelessly anywhere in the room. It includes features to replicate content views to ensure that all participants may see the actions of other participants even as they are seated around a conference table, addressing my first immediate concern.

MeetAlive gives each participant complete control over displayed content in the room. This is achieved by a perspective corrected mouse cursor that transcends the boundary of the laptop screen to position, resize, and edit their own and others’ shared content.  It also appears to support gestures to control window position.

See the technology demoed in MSR’s video below:

It is not known if the research will ever turn into a product, but meetings have been an increasing focus for enterprise-facing Microsoft, and they have released a number of dedicated video conferencing products, suggesting some of this technology may eventually hit the market, probably in a less immersive form.

The full presentation will eventually be posted here.

via WalkingCat