Microsoft has been on a fancy-user-interface-technology kick this week, between the fancy touch-screen projectors and electronic fabric announcements – but the Holodesk sort of wins at the moment, at least for those of us who think 3D environments you can manipulate with your hands are cool.

The holodesk does what it says on the tin: generates a virtual, three-dimensional projection that dynamically updates as you manipulate it with your hands. If you’re above 20, it’s like that chess set in Star Wars, and if you’re below twenty it’s like that screen Tom Cruise used in Minority Report.

The folk at DVice talk about the technical details a little more:

Microsoft’s Holodesk combines a Kinect sensor and a beam-splitter to create a virtual 3D environment that you can manipulate with your hands. The concept is simple enough: a top-mounted projector displays an image downward towards a work area, and a piece of half-silvered glass sends that image towards your eyeballs while still allowing you to see what’s going on. Placing your hands inside the work area lets the Kinect sensor see what you’re doing, and the display dynamically updates to let you virtually interact with objects that aren’t really there.
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The key to the whole system is a webcam that tracks the location of your head and eyes to make sure that the orientation of the projection stays constant.

Aren’t you glad the world didn’t end over the weekend?

[Source: DVice]