Slashdot Mirror
Walk-Thru Virtual Environment
diso writes "Walking through a wall is now really possible. WAVE, a Walk-thru Virtual Environment is a novel, low-cost, and simple method for forming a superior quality physically penetrable fog display. It is a break-through technology, literally! This work has international patents pending. An early prototype was constructed with honeycomb paper as a low-cost laminar airflow generator. When the screen is formed, images can be either rear- or front-projected onto it. Despite of being a very early prototype, the experimental fog screen already proves the operating principle with excellent results."
...as Penn and Teller would say.
Those who complain about affect & effect on
This gives the word "vaporware" an entirely new meaning.
Those of us who grew up in the seventies have been in a fog ever since.
commisioner gordan has been projecting images onto gotham city's foggy night sky for years ...
It's about damn time... think of the applications once it gets out of alpha...
/wild_speculation (Dim as dim)
- use it as a screen in a home theater... minimal exposed hardware, no screens to pull down or cats scratching at the pretty moving lights... woohoo! (downside: sneeze, and you'll have to pause the movie until the turbulence dies down. And Linus help you if you open the windows!)
- If this could be scaled down, think about the niftiness of laptop screens made with this! You could even scale them to your particular situation. (on the plane in Coach? Have a nice 12" screen. Made it to the hotel in one piece? Crank it up to 12'!)
- Use this in place of LCD screens for that fancy artwork on your walls... hmm, I wonder if you could rig up to sense movement in the fog field... nifty "Minority Report"esque GUI, here we come!
- (submitted by co-worker who just happened to walk by) Rig one up in the ladies locker room, and project the wall about two feet from where it actually is. Hide behind fog, enjoy view. Hope they don't have a towel-snapping fight and blow away all your fog...
( he made me post that, I swear...)
(posted mostly verbatim, gross sexual innuendos, hand gestures, gutteral grunts, stick figures, and hastily made pop-up book omitted)
- This might make videoconferencing and videophones cheaper too... it would be nice to see some figures estimating how much cheaper this will end up being then LCD.
Ok,
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
Still, it doesn't solve the problem of where to put the bodies, but my current moat-with-alligators seems to be working OK.
I'll tell you what the 'effect' is! It's pissing me off!
They may have used the Holodeck to meet with Einstein and Newton on Star Trek, but we're too irresponsible with our technology to do that.
Immersible fog technology will be used for only one thing: PORNO, the same technology that brought a VCR and a computer into every household.
Fog porn will be the collapse of society! Beware!
Instead of using blowers, natural wind could be used to generate the airflow. If the laminar unit and fog nozzles are suspended over a bridge or such constructions, enormous vertical and/or horizontal fog screens become possible under suitable weather conditions.
Madison Ave has just creamed their Calvin Klines.
Finally, some use for the smog.
I don't have the FOGGIEST idea what the hell this article is talking about!
I know, that was pretty corny.
... like "Gone with the wind"
Wouldn't even exist if it weren't for the Slashdot Effect. It isn't really a technological, fog screen thing...its the spirit of the server's ancestors, trying to warn the server about what could happen...
Dont you mean he should be punished?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
c followed by zero or more r's, followed by p, followed by any digit? shit, man, I don't get it.
Bart (over the radio): "Rod, Todd, this is God." ..." ... hahaha."
Rod: "How did you get on the radio?"
Bart: "What do you mean how did I get on the radio? I created the universe!"
Todd: "Forgive my brother. We believe you."
Bart: "Talk is cheap; perhaps a test of faith: Walk through the wall; I will remove it for you
(Rod walks into the wall with a thud)
Bart: "... later
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~ira/kuvat/web2.jpg
"Say, what should we do with this old banana cardboard box here?" "I know! Lets use it as a stand for our futuristic invention!"
There was something like this a few years ago... was a big thing in architectural circles. At a fair (I think), they built the shell of a house using only this fog technique, and allowed people to tour it. The only problems: 1) had to be built on a lake to keep the water supply up, and 2) the pictures they tried hanging on the walls kept falling off.
CODITO, ERGO SUM: I Code, therefore I am.
"Mommy, someday can I see the video, too?" "Yes, son. As soon as the Slashdotting is done." "When is that?" "When all the nerds find something else to click on, honey."
For a truly volumetric display, we would expect it to be vector-like anyway, no? It wouldn't make sense to rasterize a 3d space.
Well, it's 3d space, but it's still a point movnig through space. Drawing something as simple as a filled square would require scanning/tracing like a TV does, anyway. I suppose it depends on what you're displaying. If you want wireframe polyhedrons vector is fine. If you want painted/textured planes you might as well rasterise it and display with timed sweeps like TV or VGA, but in 3d.
Damn, XF86Config is going to be a bitch to configure then. Not only vert and horizontal frequencies, but Z, too!