With the motivation of using technology to do things people have never seen before and driving innovation in culturally relevant ways, the cube took shape over many months as people from different corners of the company brought their expertise, and passion, to the project.

Embodying the ethos of “doing,” initially they considered using LCD displays, but that proved expensive and too fragile at such a large scale. There were other aesthetic challenges with the displays, such as how to create seamless corners and how to maintain the shape of a perfect square. Additionally, determining the number of Kinects, to map a cohesive view of the room to keep track of where people are, changing to a different sensor on a different side, so the images displayed on the cube made visual sense to that person required new software coding and SDKs.

After iterative prototypes, the final interactive canvas resulted in 6’4” three-dimensional virtual space with custom-fabricated screens made from projection material and clear acrylic, instead of using LCD displays. The Cube was constructed with seamless corners joined to minimize optical distortion of the images that are projected from the inside powered by Kinect V2s and various hardware in the base.

The first showing was at the Decibel festival held at the Seattle EMP. For a modest trial run the response was phenomenal. Which led to a second public engagement at the Seattle Interactive Conference on October 15th where the team spoke about the project. Currently, the cube is at the Microsoft visitor center and prototype is open for the Microsoft Garage community.

With a five-sided GoPro [one underwater too] videos, animation and data visualization new designs are ready for development with the new SDK https://github.com/stimulant/MS-Cube-SDK. An unexpected by product was a Mac running a nod app receiving Kinect V2 skeleton data over the network for a PC. They think this is a first!

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Coverage:

http://betanews.com/2014/09/25/microsoft-lights-up-seattle-music-festival-with-experimental-dance-cube/

http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/24/6838317/microsofts-cube-is-a-giant-kinect-dance-part

http://www.geekwire.com/2014/microsofts-giant-kinect-powered-cube-makes-dancing-debut/

http://www.engadget.com/2014/09/24/microsoft-cube/

Third-party developers have grown very fond of building neat stuff with the Kinect, so it's no surprise that Microsoft itself would create projects using this technology. Enter the Cube, a five-sided, Kinect-powered box which can interact with people around it -- the company describes it as a "canvas for a new kind of creative expression" and a "technological sculpture that's a venue for new types of interactive art." – Engadget