Microsoft co-founder and Chairman Bill Gates is certainly a cool guy in his own right, but in the fictional Marvel Comics movie world there's no cooler technology industry billionaire than Tony Stark. The characters, played by Robert Downey Jr. in three Iron Man films as well as "The Avengers," is shown as being as comfortable with creating new technology as he is with a mixed drink.
So it's not a shock to learn that when it came to make "Iron Man 3," the producers came to Microsoft Research to get some advice on how the movie could incorporate some future technology. In a post on the Next at Microsoft website, the division's general manager, Kevin Schofield, wrote:
They were thinking hard about the kinds of interactive technologies that we would see Tony Stark using in his lab and with the Iron Man suit. Much of our conversation revolved around large immersive and 3-D displays, gesture-based interaction, and the intersection of the two.
Microsoft Research has been working on those kinds of projects for years, such as the HoloDesk and more recently the IllumiRoom demo that projects images from a game console out to the surrounding room. Last week, Schofield was part of a panel discussion in Los Angeles, hosted by the Science and Entertainment Exchange, that had him and representatives from other companies discussing the science behind "Iron Man 3" with Stephen Broussard and Drew Pearce, the executive producer and co-screenwriter, respectively, of the film.
While it may be a long time before we ever get to the exosuit that Tony Stark creates, the user interfaces and other computing devices shown in the film are not that far off from reality. It will be interesting to see how they will develop in the years to come, in part to Microsoft's efforts.
Source: Next at Microsoft | Image via Marvel
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