Remember how cool the Holodeck in Star Trek was? Well, you’re not the only one. Microsoft does too, but rather than just waste time dreaming about how great it would be, they’re actually working on a way to transform our living rooms into one.

The images on this page represent Microsoft’s vision for its futuristic games consoles – and what a future it will be. Gamers will no longer be restricted to viewing the action on their TV, as Microsoft is planning to quite literally immerse them in an alternative world.

Microsoft’s Holodeck will incorporate current Kinect sensor technology – an advanced games controller that lets players interact with their games by waving their hands around in front of the TV – and will map out your entire living room, before overlaying an immersive 3D world onto your walls.

The technology hasn’t been developed yet – so far Microsoft has only filed a patent application for it – but if and when they get it right, you’ll never need to turn on your TV again. Instead, you’ll switch on your entire living room, transforming it into a fully immersive, 3D universe where you can run around shooting at aliens, or hack away at monsters to your heart’s content.

Aside from projecting an alternative universe into your living room, the Kinect technology will also be able to recognize furniture, and deal with these items by either masking them from your view, or possibly even incorporating them into the game itself.

Kinect, which began life as a simple accessory for Microsoft’s Xbox games console, has played a big part in the console’s success in recent years. Gamers, no longer restricted to a controller, can now use their bodies to interact with games in a myriad of different ways – for example, using your fists to slap the bad guys around, or physically drawing a handgun from your hip and blasting imaginary enemies away.

The technology combines a depth camera with infra-red to indentify where the player is standing and all of their movements, before translating these to the character on screen. It’s not known how far along Microsoft is with its projection technology, but the Kinect already exists – and so when Microsoft finally starts projecting images onto our walls, we’ll be one step away from having a real Holodeck all too ourselves.

All we need now is a few sexy female characters to play with and we’ll be laughing….