Slashdot Mirror
Surround Lights
Branephaid writes "According to this press release from Color Kinetics, (the company that came up with LED-based colored premise lighting and those nifty Sauce lightsticks), a new technology called "Surround Light" could soon enhance our gaming and movie watching. The idea is that the Color Kinetics lighting products are interfaced to your computer to play a "lighting effects track" in the physical room around you. Seems pretty nifty, but probably expensive." The boring folks out there will bitch that there are patents involved but they just want to complain or get off their one track minds. I'm more interested in the potential applications of such a technology. Lightning in a moody scene in a movie? Explosions in a shooter? Surround sound really is an amazing advancement, could surround light come close, or is this just hype?
I've been wondering if Rob would ever express any misgivings about how the site he and Jeff made popular has now been turned into a nonstop 2600-wannabe rant against any form of intellectual property, a rant that bears little relation to their own opinions. It looked like they had pretty much given up and turned the reins over to Michael and Jon Katz.
I'm reminded of that old L.A. Law episode where the old guy realizes how much the pushy woman has usurped control of the firm and announces, "Now, we're taking it back." (OK, I'm a little hazy on the details - I wasn't the biggest fan.)
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
If you need a CNN logo to remind you you're watching TV, then you're probably watching too much of it... ;-)
Colorkinetics has been hyping their 'innovative' use of colored LED's for a long time, and have very little to actually show for it. It's my guess that they're after more VC funding.
I would say that their patent claims are very misleading, and the patents themselves probably aren't worth the paper they're written on. Here are the two patents they cited:
6,016,038 Multicolored LED lighting method and apparatus
The systems and methods described herein relate to LED systems capable of generating light, such as for illumination or display purposes. The light-emitting LEDs may be controlled by a processor to alter the brightness and/or color of the generated light, e.g., by using pulse-width modulated signals. Thus, the resulting illumination may be controlled by a computer program to provide complex, predesigned patterns of light in virtually any environment.
6,150,774 Multicolored LED lighting method and apparatus
The systems and methods described herein relate to LED systems capable of generating light, such as for illumination or display purposes. The light-emitting LEDs may be controlled by a processor to alter the brightness and/or color of the generated light, e.g., by using pulse-width modulated signals. Thus, the resulting illumination may be controlled by a computer program to provide complex, predesigned patterns of light in virtually any environment.
There's no way this is a novel invention. Using a processor to modulate and change LED colors? Done for decades. I'm willing to bet that they've never attempted to enforce these patents, and most likely they won't.
As for the video game application, there's maybe a small niche here, but this is hardly earth-shattering news.
I haven't seen an industry that had such a fight with its own obsolescence, except for the military-industrial complex. Watch for the MPAA to borrow from McCarthy's playbook. ("I have in my hand here a list of 5000 movie pirates...")
And you think I'm kidding...
-jhp
/. -- the Free Republic of technology.
The light glare off of a round monitor / TV would suck big time. I've got a VVega, and I've STILL got reflections.
Would the main display brighten as well to offset the increase in ambient lighting. The human eye would see the main display get "darker" when the ambient lighting went up. You'd lose some contrast as well.
I'd think it'd be more of a distraction than anything else.
I keep trying to pick fights, but I can't shake this Excellent karma.
Better than surround lights would be a Surround DigiScents system. Then I could emulate at work the comfort of my own bedroom; empty coffee cups through the left sniffer, musty old mouse mat from the centre sniffer, the two right sniffers would tell me there's some cold pizza somewhere in my unmade bed, and my rear-left would recreate that homely smell of the pile of socks in the corner.
insignificant sig
-----
crazy dynamite monkey
"Patents and copyrights are allright when they are there to protect real innovation and development of new technology."
One man's protection is another man's extortion.
"From the post, its plain to see that these patents deal with a specific method and implementation of an idea."
So, if you happen to believe that intellectual property is a valid concept, this should be a patentable idea if this was a non-obvious advance in the field. It doesn't look like one to me, but maybe I'm not well-versed in the field.
"This isn't one-click nonsense, this is a specific protocol."
Some of us think that artificial goverment monopolies are a bad thing no matter what they are "protecting," and that a free market is in serious danger whenever patents exist because of the chilling effect patents have. What new advances have been made in fractal compression since the early 1990s? Why aren't we hearing more about wavelet compression? Why hasn't the price of Polaroid cameras and film gone down?
If I see a great idea, ordinarily I'll rush to inplement it. Not anymore. Now I worry about patents and I search for any evidence that what I'm working on is patented. There's no way I can protect myself against pending software patents that I might not find about until the cease and desist order.
"Please at least try reading the article before jerking your knee. Taco opposes meaningless and assinine patents. No where did he say patents on their own are inherently evil."
Aposty might not be jerking his knee. He might have thought this through long ago and come to a conclusion different than yours. He might believe that patents on their own are inherently evil. I know I do.
Though I'm not sure if it's worth it as a user, as a developer it's probably not a bad idea to include support, they assured me that there was just a small (10 lines or so?) chunk of code you'd have to include so that systems with this installed could use it with your game. If that's true, why not? I can't remember for certain, but I don't think support was tied to DirectX. (I know I asked, but I can't remember the answer.)
As an aside, this might actually be an example where patents indirectly spurred innovation. I talked with someone who knew the behind the scenes story of this company, and apparently they made so much money from products based on one of their patents that they decided they could throw some of that at a wacky idea based on their technology that they weren't sure would work. Even if Surround Light crashes and burns as an idea, their other products are going to keep them in the black.
There may be patent claims, and other such things which always surround the introduction of a new and innovative product, but I'd actually expect to see medical claims against this company too, as movie studios and others develop 'light tracks' for your favorite movies, and game companies develop the same for your favorite first person shooters.
Epoleptics throughout the world beware poorly written 'light tracks' will send thousands into grand mal seizures. This technology will take time before it's perfected, just like those movie rides with theI-Max style screens and the moving audience seats. If the timing was just a little off, it would cause the viewers to loose their equilibrium and puke their guts out. IF this company isn't careful, the lighting effects they're making possible just might have similar impacts.
---
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Something related to this that is pretty darn cool is this project from Stanford involving using projectors to project textures, etc. onto 3-D objects. Lots of interesting applications and challenges.
--
George W. Bush
President, United States of America
George W. Bush
President, United States of America
The new game in my house is going to be 'switch off the screen, and guess what movie is playing by the flashing lights.
I am guessing that the opening scenes of 'Saving Private Ryan' will be the starter for ten, but 'Sleepless in Seattle' will be the difficult bonus round.
Except for the scene where she is driving at night singing about arses, of course.
-- The avalanche has started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote.
This sounds really great. What if one were installed in a real movie theater, instead of just darkness? I think that muffled colors could really enhance a movie (but nothing bright enough to make it hard to see).
Imagine The Matrix with monitor-green lighting for computers, muzzle flashes for the lobby fight, firey lighting for the lobby explosion, all on a giant screen. Aww yeah.
A) Woo woo it sounds great, and they've kindly published the interface so controlable from linux, etc...
B) Oh no! They've patented the design. Selfish commercial bastards.
What's flavor of the month on Slashdot this month? Do we like or hate companies like this?
THL.
--
Keeping
So could I get a machine that flickers like a 16mm projector behind me. So my home theator will really feel like the moovies.
Think about the possibilities of shadowing and sneaking around with a rail gun / crossbow / psionics / dead cat - whatever. When in combat, peripheral lighting in a game might indicate where the enemy is and how close. If an enemy is approaching from around a corner and blocking a light source as it makes the approach, and therefore indicating position and range before coming into view, it could introduce a whole new level of realism in tactics. Similarly, lighting could indicate temperature for puzzle situations, or weather changes that may affect visibility later on, etc. Pretty cool. But it better come with a vibrating seatcushion, too...