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
That is one of the cooler things I've ever seen.
Think of the applications of this:
Finally, something that closely resembles 3d holograms
"Help me obi-wan, you're my only hope" and all that type of stuff
Also, it could be used really well in a haunted house
Casual Games/Downloads
How is this different from the water screens that you see at the theme parks such as Disneyworld? (other than the fact that you do not need a lake)
This is cool, but not terribly new. At many light shows, sprayers/misters work churning out water vapor to provide something for the lasers to hit. I have witnessed several of these, and sometimes a screen is generated to facilitate the production of the light effects. This isn't really that much different, merely on a smaller scale.
This gives the word "vaporware" an entirely new meaning.
This would be pretty cool if you could add it to a car. When there is a heavy fog to drive through you could project images of the road in front of the driver.
Fog has also been know to shut down airports for quite some time. If they could project an image of the terrian pilot would be able to take off without a hitch.
sounds pretty amazing
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!
Ok, I've reached my plagarism threshold.
Yes, this is a very nifty toy. Yes, it deserves to be posted to slashdot.
But can you, the submitter, not scrape together the two brain cells required to post a summary in your own words? Or space the two seconds to type, "From the site:" and put quotes around your text?
It's getting to the point where two thirds of the articles posted have summary text directly copied from the site being linked to. This went from "minor irritant" to "annoyance" a while back.
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"
First interpretations:
This technology has a bit to go to achieve commodity-level feasibility. However, its very promising. I would expect to see this in clubs, concerts, and tradeshows.
This isn't 3D. Its a flat image projected on a water-based screen.
The drawback continues to be the placement of a projection device and its medium (if not a wall). Here, you have a fog wall and a projection TV device. Until those two converge, we'll all still hope for those "Help Me Obi-Wan" shots.
Shouldn't there be a way to build a floating image from the interference of two separate light beams? Wherever the beams intersect would be brighter/changed. Hmm.. Maybe only good for vector displays.
There is a ride called "Indiana Jones" at Disneyland. One of the special effects used in the ride is similar to the water screens and to this WAVE.
In the effect, a machine sprays some fog, and a projector projects an image of "rats crawling up some vines" onto the fog, and your vehicle travels through the projection, which makes it seem like your traveling through a bunch of "rats crawling up some vines".
It's pretty cool, but only when the air is still enough for you to see the rats. People with rat-phobia can really freak out.
Other times, air turbulance moves the fog around too much, so all you see is a very distorted image of the rats (Imagine watching a movie on a shredded movie screen).
This product claims to reduce the turbulance by containing the fog inside a "laminar flow", whatever that means.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
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?"
I wonder how they prevent turbulence problems. Someone moving 'through' this virtual environmen obviously wordt perturb the smoke and distort the image.
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
I've actually witnessed this thingy live in action, and must say it looked much better than in the pictures -although it's still not quite on the same iceberg with traditional contrivances for visual information.
The 'new' part about this is indeed the system to keep the fog smooth enough to be able to make it useful, as some bright individuals have already deducted, not the idea of projecting video on fog..
E
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
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!"