You might not think it, looking at the ribbon UI and the missing Start button in Windows 8, but Microsoft has one of the largest R&D departments in the world. Like IBM, Samsung, Intel, and other high-tech companies, though, Microsoft’s R&D is rarely publicized. We know that these companies have received hundreds of thousands of patents over the last 50 years, but it is very unusual to see bleeding-edge prototypes in action because these inventions ultimately form the trade secret lifeblood of a company.

Last week, however, Craig Mundie — Microsoft’s chief research and strategy officer — showed off some of Microsoft Research’s most promising projects at the annual TechForum event. The projects mostly revolve around movement tracking (Kinect and Kinect-like functionality is still a huge deal for Microsoft) and augmented reality — but one demo, a 3D desktop that utilizes a see-through OLED display, blew my mind, so we’ll talk about that one first. To begin with, watch the video:

The most surprising bit is the see-through Samsung display. Basically, OLED displays are inherently slightly transparent — and Samsung demoed a “40% transparent” 14-inch display at CES 2010 — but here, Samsung has produced a display that looks almost completely see-through. As for where Microsoft could actually apply this technology in the real world, who knows; a 3D Surface-type interface for Windows 9, perhaps? “Use Windows, on a see-through window!”

Next up is the Holoreflector, which combines a mirror, a huge LCD display, Kinect, and the sensors in a WP7/WP8 smartphone to create an augmented reality display. This is very similar to the Kinect-cum-Surface display that I theorized about last year — but again, just watch the video:

Finally we have IllumiShare and a “seeing display.” IllumiShare is a pair of desktop peripherals that combine a projector and a camera. The camera points down at your desk and transmits what it sees over a network to the other projector. In other words, your desk (and your friend’s desk) becomes a shared space that you can use for brainstorming, telepresence, gaming, and more. The “seeing display” is a lot like Surface, but with the eventual goal of building huge telepresence displays like the one seen at the beginning of the Microsoft Office 2019 video.