Microsoft Research continues to push the boundaries of what is possible with SurroundWeb, where it can be best described to be a 3D browser concept which is capable of projecting Web pages onto your walls. Right now, SurroundWeb remains as a prototype, but the very idea of using your room’s walls as part of the browser makes for an interesting read. The thing is, some of us do decorate our homes with various bric-a-brac to the point where there is no more space on our walls, making the SurroundWeb rather limited in its potential in such an environment. Still, it is interesting to note that SurroundWeb would be able to offer web pages the ability to display across multiple surfaces in a room, all the while adapting their appearance to objects.
It will require a one-time setup procedure before SurroundWeb can be used, as it performs a scan for projectable surfaces, taking approximately a minute to do so. The prototype will follow that up by beaming content onto such surfaces at greater than 30 frames per second, where you will have up to 25 screens to ‘play” with, in addition to up to a 1440×720 display. Talk about delivering an immersive room experience, as humanity makes the jump from Web pages to ‘Web rooms’. This would be the obvious progression from the Illumiroom concept that we looked at last year.