What do you get if you combine a Kinect, a projector and a building?

Is this a new way to have fun in public?

If you remember Breakout - rows of blocks a the top of the screen and a paddle to bounce a ball into them to destroy a block - then you might not feel nostalgic about it. After all, it was a very limited sort of game even if it was a pioneer of computer games in general. However, take one Kinect and one building and you have something quite different when you use it to create a Breakout game.

In the video below you can see the bricks, ball and paddle all projected onto an old building and you can see the player move from side-to-side to control the paddle. The player's position is being detected by a Kinect, is there no end to the fun you can have with this gadget. The really clever bit, and you might not notice it unless you look closely at the video, is that the ball bounces off real architectural features of the building - like the windows, for example.

As We Come In Peace,  the company responsible for the project says:

"Breakout is a video game that everyone played. But it's a different experience when it takes monumental proportions and you can play with your ​​body.

Brick allows the player to move the paddle through the movements of their body to bounce a ball and break bricks.

The system uses two main technologies:

• Kinect for detecting the movement of the player
• Mapping, which adapts the game to the smallest features of the building.

Thus, the ball bounces on the real elements of the architecture, windows, columns and gutters."

If you happen to win then the reward is a light show that looks pretty cool in itself! Perhaps this is the end of firework displays and laser shows as we know them. It is time for the computer and a projector to take over.

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