Microsoft Research develops new way of video calling

Jan 19, 2016 11:13 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft Research, Redmond’s division in charge of creating the most innovative tools and services that you’ve ever heard of, has recently developed what’s probably the most awkward yet super cool way of having a conversation online with someone.

Using Kinect cameras and projectors, the team at Microsoft Research has developed a way to project one person in your living room and let you have a conversation with them just as if they were sitting next to you.

Even though it might sound really odd to have a conversation with a hologram, the researchers claim that the so-called Room2Room will always project a digital image of your contact that you can see from any perspective, so even if you move to a different angle, you should still see your friend in a natural position. Furthermore, you might be able to interact with that person through several gestures.

No need for HoloLens

Certainly, this project could be further improved with the help of HoloLens, the revolutionary device that projects holograms and lets you interact with them in a very natural way. Microsoft’s HoloLens is expected to debut later this year for select developers, but for the moment, the Research team says it can bring Room2Room to life without the need for this device.

MIT Technology Review writes that the technology allows two persons to sit in front of each other and talk just as they’d do it face to face. The connection is established online, though, which Microsoft says should completely change the way we talk to contacts through apps such as Skype.

Each person can be projected in each other’s room, so the conversation can go the same from both sides.

A public demo of the technology is expected to be released very soon, the aforementioned source writes, but there’s still no indication of whether Microsoft wants to bring it to users in the coming years or not.