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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
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 gives the word "vaporware" an entirely new meaning.
commisioner gordan has been projecting images onto gotham city's foggy night sky for years ...
Alternatively, a good demonstration of prior art would invalidate their patent.
Honestly, the "new thing" seems to be the "non-turbulent laminar airflow" used to keep the fog confined and smooth enough to project convincing images on. Basically, it seems like the idea is to blow a smooth, flat stream of air, and then add fog or smoke to the stream. The smoother the stream, the better the image.
Parting shot: is it a patent violation to disseminate kit ideas? I know that the patent itself needs to describe the invention pretty well, but would it be actionable to put DIY instructions on the web? Cause this is kinda neat, and it looks like it might be doable with honeycomb paper, a hair dryer and a block of dry ice.
IP is just rude.
Is there any torture so subl
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.
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.
Actually, this has nothing to do with 3d. The only innovation here is that it is a penetrable 2d display.
Finally, some use for the smog.
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.