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Walk-Thru Virtual Environment

Posted by timothy on from the foggy-mcbottom dept.

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."

5 of 168 comments (clear)

  1. It's all done with Smoke and Mirrors... by DLWormwood · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...as Penn and Teller would say.

    --
    Those who complain about affect & effect on /. should be disemvoweled
  2. Vaporware? by njchick · · Score: 5, Funny

    This gives the word "vaporware" an entirely new meaning.

  3. nothing new .. by jest3r · · Score: 5, Funny

    commisioner gordan has been projecting images onto gotham city's foggy night sky for years ...

  4. How cool is this?!? by Cervantes · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's about damn time... think of the applications once it gets out of alpha...

    - 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, /wild_speculation (Dim as dim)

    --
    If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
  5. Tomorrows Mega Cinema Centres by jukal · · Score: 5, Funny
    Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Cairo, Bangkok, Beijing, Bombay, Calcutta, Delhi, Jakarta, Karachi, Manila, Seoul, Shanghai, London, Moscow...maybe a few more.

    Finally, some use for the smog.