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Walk-thru Fog Screen
fluor2 writes "Ever wanted a screen floating in air? Two scientists, Ismo Rakkolainen and Karri Palovuori, both from Tampere University of Technology, Finland have come up with an idea. It is called the Walk-thru Fog Screen. The fog screen, consisting of 'fog' that is blown down from top, and the protective laminar airflow creates a thin and crisp surface, pretty undisturbed by the air in the rest of the room, making it ideal for projector usage. People can walk right through this screen of fog. Their next idea is to use the fog as a touch-screen, making it even more accessible." For a screen one can walk through, the image quality is better than I'd have thought.
is this what they call vapor-ware ?
S
Kingdom of Loathing (www.kingdomofloathing.com) Addicted is me
For some moments in life, there are no words. But for this moment, I have but three:
Oh...Emm...Gee!!!! (OMG)
Just imagine! You know the holographs they designed for the Star Wars trilogies? Those effects are now possible with this sort of device, and the fog would look so much more natural in the movie! Besides movies, what other uses can you imagine for this technology?
Just watched the video clip of the two Finns demonstrating the screen in the museum. It appears the wall of fog is very thick, though the creators said this is adjustable depending on how transparent you want the screen to be. Wonder how quiet/noisy this is, and whether they can clean up the bottom of the screen.
** Early post, but possibly the first useful post?
Homestarrunner.net -- It's Dot Com!
walk through my Blue Screen of Death!
-
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
So will this be installed with a "Wise Old Man" Genuine People Personality in the Captain's quarters of future naval ships?
Will we see giant submarines in the future that go into space and...
Err, sorry. Got sidetracked.
This is cool. In a 1996 sorta way.
Wasn't this the type of TV set they had in Seaquest DSV for the AI computer?
Now imagine the synth--nerd concerts, where you can see what he's seeing on his laptop, projected behind him!
:)
Coooooooll!!! No more cheesy laptop musicians - make the software part of the act too!
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Just because it's computer video doesn't mean it's mpeg!
Alas I can't transcode it to mpeg either.
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Sounds like the hologram they had in SeaQuest DSV. Not that I ever watched that program of course... ;)
Oh my! Those Finns are really crazy!
...before R2-D2 projects "help me ObiWan, you're my only hope!!
Get out of the screen what do you think you are? Made out ouf Glass?
Whats A sig anyway
Imagine the uses for porn!
We played dungeons and dragons for 3 hours.....then i was slain by an elf
My god slashdot!! Can't you keep your stories straight?? If not SEARCH GOOGLE!!. That's how I found it again.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
I am not really sure what display use it has in the "real world" but it would make a great cinematic effect.
Also you could scare folks in amusement park rides making them think they are about to crash into stuff.
You could also hide behind it and spy on people maybe...
Who knows...
--ken
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From the article: The fog screen enables many novel applications indoors. Interesting applications include walk-thru advertisements on shops or malls, or a walk-thru screen in world-class museums, corporate showrooms, trade fairs, theme parks, special events, spas, theatres, science centers, lobbies, etc. We can extend the technology to limited outdoor usage.
Does anyone else find it find it very disturbing that the first application they suggest is advertising?
Jason
ProfQuotes
The video features a mime. No not a MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) but one of those guys with the white face paint. A very bad choice. If they don't want people to hate their product they sound use *anything* else.
It's all just smoke and mirrors!
How will he know when the Comissioner really calls him and its not just a couple of Finns messing about with their own batsign?
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
This isn't going to be used in business meetings, where projection screens are available anyway. I guess smoke-screens will be used as advertising space: One could use them much closer to or in the way of the customer flow at trade shows, without risking damage to equipment or consumer. For that purpose, a little image unstability may even prove useful as eye-catcher.
This is a dupe from a while back (almost a year ago)... slashdot
Like every new technology, this will be commercialized first by the porn industry. Combined with the touch-screen capabilities, and some tactile feedback, this sounds like a great success...
Now this is a cool and useful thing. It would be cool to have something like this in the home so I could use it as a monitor. If the main unit was hidden with a drop down keyboard. Well hidden PC :)
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
Ars Technica story on the same thing.
--- There isn't any problem that can't be solved by a small, low yield nuclear device, is there??
Ehka pierusumu toimisi paremmin?
Yes, disturbing, but how else should they go about getting major corporate funding ASAP?
I'm sure some ad execs are having trouble sleeping, thinking of all the fun uses they can put this to...
--------
If I can own an idea, does that mean I can legally claim some portion of your soul once I tell you that idea? Or even if you just come up with it on your own? Heck, who needs contracts written in blood...
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Grab your favorite smelly hippie and head out to the old outdoor venue, forget about 90+ degree temps when you hop into the Fog Screen 3D!
Based on the "mist tents" seen at Lollapalalaala(TM), you'll trip balls walking thru the 50 foot cube of cooling fog filled with visuals that _may_ have something to do with the music!
Seriously, this is a great idea and I expect we'll see something based on this which gets the audience inside the thing at entertainment venues in the future. I also would like to say I'm glad to see it looking so good in the demo pics.
Jonah Hex
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
i saw it at siggraph last week in san diego. the wall of fog was not really very thick - though it did seem to be more transparent than and not as bright as it appears in the videos and stills on the site. it was still pretty cool and people seemed duly impressed, but i didn't think it was quite as convincing as a picture plane as it looks on the website.
as for noise - i don't recall it being noisy... it may not have made any noise at all. then again, the siggraph emerging technologies space is pretty noisy itself, so it may have made some sound that i didn't notice.
We already saw this last year.
"The great thing about multitasking is that several things can go wrong at once." -me
If the fog somehow is shaped as an object we want to recreate, and projected against from all sides, would this make the object look like a 'real' hologram ('real', like from the movies!) ?
I can already see a lot of applications for this. Bring out the mimejuice! And crack some ice!
This technology would be very useful for extremely realistic firearms training. Think FPS with real guns. The bullets would create holes in the fog screen which could be recognized by video sensors and this information could in turn be used as an input to the simulation.
Did you know you can fertilize your lawn with used motor oil?
To be honest, it needs work; the top of the screen looks fine, but turbulence causes the bottom of the screen to ruffle about like a flag in wind. Watch the movies provided; the bottom half of the images are all but lost to distortion.
Quite a lot, as it happens. The main hassle being that there aren't any well established open standards that provide decent compression rates. At least, if there are then I'd be grateful for people enlightening me
I had to put video up on my site - I chose MPEG 1 at first because everyone could view it, but eventually the file sizes started getting huge and I had to switch to something else. ISO MP4 can't be played by MS WMP, Divx and what have you can't be played without installing additional software on client machines...what to pick?
In the end, I chose .wmv for a while. Seemed to give the best picture quality/file size trade-off. However, since then I've bought myself a Powerbook so all future things will be Quicktime.
Honestly - if anyone knows a format that can be played on out-of-the-box Windows, OS X and common Linux distros without the installation of any extra software, I'd love to hear about it.
Cheers,
Ian
I don't care how much you whine and cry, this won't be making any Star Wars style holographs. You could project a 2D image onto it, but a full 3D image (viewable from all angles), would likely be impossible. How would you manage to project images into all the crevices and such, and also how would you hold the fog in a specific shape?
Defender of Microsoft and Communism!!!
Interesting applications include walk-thru advertisements on shops or malls
Great, just what the human race needs. Another way to display advertisements. I do my best to ignore them, but if I have to walk through an ad, it's going to be hard not to see it.
What, like what these guys have been doing for years?
How about using a giant outdoor mist-screen to show flickery 8mm. movies of ghosts &c. from a concealed projector, in order to scare away the residents from an old village where you have been secretly conducting a highly lucrative but probably illegal operation, so they won't nick your money / grass you up?
.....
Oh, wait, I think this might have been done before
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
i made a fog screen once in my friends basement... some marijuana smoke and laser pointers, i was in fog screen heaven...
fact: microsoft > linux
... remember that? They projected a hologram on what look like a stream of vapor from the celing - very clever, even if looks a bit crappy *G*
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Then I can realize my dream, Brittney Spears backup dancer. And after the show... she leads me by the hand to her dressing room... errrrm
I mean to play Quake 10, yeah, thats it. Quake.
Seaquest, DSV, had something exactly like that - it was one of the teenage-hero-brat's "mentor" display.
Then maybe I can have my own virtual pamela anderson that I can... erm nevermind.
Didn't yer man on seaquest dsv have one of these?
So, combine this with adaptive camouflage and you've got yourself an invisible secret lair from which to lauch evil plans. Super villiany is finally feasible, and just in time for Arnold to win the Governorship to do battle with, sweet!
This will be very handy in laptops. Fog is lightweight and it does not break. I hope it does not need too much battery power.
...fog walks through you!
Why?
*sigh* ... Now we know how slow do things have to get before Slashdot is reduced to reposting last year's tech news.
I think you could make a pretty decent mockery of any billboard using this with a leafblower...or an industrial vacuum: "hey, mcdonalds! you *suck*"
It's a cool idea, but aren't the particles rather unhealthy if a dust is used, and wouldn't it take a lot of energy usage to produce a vapour (e.g. dry ice requires refrigeration)?
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Not that they will need it...
r a/ wave.html
http://www.dark-hill.co.uk/www.cs.tut.fi/%257Ei
Doug.
Given that one of the largest consumers of big flat panel TVs (JCDecaux in Europe anyhow) is the advertising businesses, it's a sensible proposal. I can imagine that the fog screen would be very striking in airports, as the travellers on rolling carpets are carried right up to and then through the screen. Whap!!
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Whoa, I thought only the Taelons were supposed to have this technology ! But hmm, now that I think about it, Da'an's screen is actually crappier-looking than this... Go humans go !
>|<*:=
ummm... I think the visual effect of the "holographic" Doctor/Shrink in Seaquest DSV was created by projecting the image of him on a wall of smoke that was sucked across the room in a stream of air.
It actually was a pretty nice effect to get that translucent, wavy look without any CGI.
for haunted houses and castles everywhere when those damn ghosts don't want to co-operate.
--
Luck is just skill you didn't know you had.
I'm sure they had one of these on that show... a genuine one at that...
I can't even remember how many years ago that was...
You fool! You've given cheese to a lactose intolerant volcano god! Do you know what that means?
This sorta thing reminds me of a failed experiment some freinds and I worked on a couple years ago. I had just got a fog machine and a projector, so we decided to make a video screen. We went to Home Depot to get the materials: rolls of plastic, wood, screws, and hinges and etc.. We essentially made a box that was 8 feet high, 8 feet wide, and 3 feet deep covered in a thin layer of plastic. Upon filling this monstrosity with fog, we realised it didnt really work- too much turbulance.
:)
So we turned it into a really nice fish-bowl. *of the smoking variety*
....move along....nothing to see here....
This has been done before by several consulting groups specializing in water feature design for themes parks, etc....example (not with fog, but full water droplets) at Canada's Wonderland (in Toronto) a few years ago - we used a very large wide fan jet to create a screen, on which a Disney special feature was projected using standard equipment....
I can never see a mime without flashing back to the reception scene with the mime waiters in This Is Spinal Tap, with boss mime Billy Crystal snapping at Dana Carvey, "Come one, don't talk back, mime is money, let's go, move it!"
small video
and
large video.
It reminds me of some of the dynamic textures in Unreal Tournament, like someone changed the fire to look like Mona Lisa.
I'm guessing this wont be compatible with the Geforce FX 5800 then........
This is an old idea. I've seen outdoor "Laserium" style shows, projected onto huge fog-fountains on barges on a lake. The barges were lined up in a row, each one sprayed out a flat semicircle of fine water particles, when lined up together they made a strip of solid "screen" about 50 feet high. They laser-projected animations on the wide strip across the lake. Then they ran fireworks from barges even farther out on the lake. It was way cool.
Now when you work out with your aerobics instructor, she really is an air head...
Yeah, why?
That's very perceptive of you Mr Stapleton and rather unexpected in a G Major
This is a new prototype, unveiled in July 2003. A revisit instead of a new post.
Now go flame the guys posting dupes of a new Mozilla release.
Languages aren't inherently fast -- implementations are efficient
What next, edible keyboards? Honestly, this has to be one of the dumbest ideas I've heard of in a long time. And in this business, that's saying a LOT.
To use anything is unexcusable.
How we know is more important than what we know.
... with their haunted mansion ride?
Wile E. Coyote could have actually caught the Road Runner with one of these things.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Occam's Razor says these traits are all related...
In The Last Starfighter , Alex Rogan's mentor "Grig" described the technology used for displaying their heads up display.
Basically he said it was produced by projecting images onto a field of xeon gas. (Or something along those lines. Anyone care to refresh my memory?)
Seems to me like these guys got their inspiration from the movies. :)
Join Tor today!
Why not make a bead curtain out of RGB led's and have a display controller light it up like a really big lcd screen (or lite-brite ;) It would satisfy hippies and geeks simultaneously!!!
I wanna know when they're going to implement these things in our homes and workplaces, like the comm-screens that pop up in midair in "Martian Successor Nadesico."
On the other hand, that might not be so great. The last thing I want is for my mom or boss to materialize right in front of my computer screen while I'm in the middle of enjoying some really good... er, browsing Slashdot.
My vacuum cleaner is now a screen capture utility! Can I get a Hoover with USB?
I wonder how well a laminar flow smoke curtain would do with images projected on BOTH sides? The cool effect I imagine is walking down a corridor with several of these screens crossing it. As you walk through the image of a wall with a door in it, you turn around and see the image of the other side of the "wall". Look forward again and you see the next "wall", which you can also walk through to see what's on the other side. The series of images could give a tourist a walk right through a virtual pryramid, or some other interesting tour, like the entrance hall in the opening sequence of 'Get Smart' or MST3K.
...think of a sig, quick! Oh no! Too late... arrrrrgh!!!
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
I agree, I don't quite understand what's so great about this, grab an LCD projector and you'd be surprised at where you can put an image. I guess it's cool how they figure how to make fog come out of high powered jets so it's thick enough for an image to work on.
THe movies were very underwhelming.
-- taking over the world, we are.
Because the load on the air conditioning for removing all of that humidity from an indoor setup will be huge.
Disney has used a (sorta) similar technology in their DisneyWorld (Disney Studios) show called 'Fantasmic'. Rather than generating fog and the air-stream to keep it in line, the Disney approach sprays a wall of fine mist from the ground up. Film and laser animation are then projected onto this curtain. I don't have any good idea of the size of curtain they produce, but it seems huge - i.e. two of these curtains are used for an audience of approx. 10,000 people.
CrazyLegs
"Pork!!" said the Fish, and we all laughed.
I think this is a plot to get porn attics closer to there images and video.. Thats so smart kudos to you guys!
--Matt Fisher
> Wonder if you're able to breath in the room when this smoke is there for a couple of hours.
It's not smoke, it's fog. The difference is that it's not going to hang around after it leaves the laminar airflow, because it's opaque vaporized stuff (fog), not particles suspended in air (smoke). There are lots of materials that one can use to create non-persistent fog that isn't water vapor, much like the fog used in nightclubs. It'll just dissipate when it gets out of the laminar airflow.
Virg
I hate to rain on anyone's parade, but does anyone remember a sci-fi show called "Sea Quest"? Big multi-colored guy named Dagwood (yes, after the sandwhich), futuristic submarine that is shaped like a fish, and a "talking" dolphin? Anywho, the captin quite frequently talked with a digital representation of some older captin (it was an AI) that was projected onto a - you guessed it - screen of fog... And on the show the projector was above the fog shooting at an extremely steep angle so you almost couldn't get in the way of the image....
Anywho, just thought I would point that out (and btw, sea quest was around back in the early to mid 90's....)
Peace
Great so now we have transparent glass doors we walk into and opaqe screens we can walk through.
Put your money where your mouth is -
If you cast your mind back to the 'hologram' in the Captains cabin in the original Seaquest DSV, that used /exactly/ this technology.
Rich
R. Douglas McPheters already patented the HoloTouch.
-- search the web
the same thing, and for 20+ years, then you are correct.
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Parent = Troll
All I want is a kind word, a warm bed and unlimited power.
I know it's not quite the same thing, but the musical fountain on Sentosa island (Singapore) has been doing some pretty impressive video & laser projection onto water spray for a while :) It certainly had me impressed.
Of course, you might get a little wet when trying to walk through a water mist screen, and it's probably not too practical for indoor situations :)
(Some days it works really well, some days it doesn't.)
and it was bloody silent. i specifically asked about those fans and they don't even make a whisper. those things would be perfect in my computer, very hush hush. They only plan to build 10 of these at 100 K per.
can you project in 3D? it seems that a fog screen should allow you do do this because it could have depth to it, right?
-- Betting on the survival of the media industry is a serious risk. I advise investing elsewhere.
Where did you get the bit about the touch screen? I didn't see that on the page. How would it work?
Random is the New Order.
Projecting advertisements onto clouds is prohibited in most countries, since way back when some assholes thought it would be cool to write laser adverts on clouds above the cities, it spurned very hasty, world-wide legislation to stop this visual polution. This screen system therefore would have some difficulties...
Oh well, what the hell...
I hate to be a prior art party pooper; but the idea was, in my experience, first shown in the lamentable TV series "SeaQuest DSV" in the early'ish 1990's. As I recall the ships computer and video phone used a "dropping fog" display. Whether the display was interactive is moot as that is not unique.
I think it would be really cool to make doors out of fog. Presumably they'd still allow some air to flow through the doorway, and obviously sound could travel through, but they'd provide a bit more visual privacy than say bead curtains.
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www.n1ywb.com
The entire structure, thus, was totally covered in fog - and they used both lasers and video projectors to color and animate the surface.
And anyway... what, nobody ever thought of shineing a video or slide projector (or laser) at fog before. Geezesus.
Hello!?!? Captains Quarters aboard SeaQuest: DSV. Old geezer shows up on a screen made of downward projected fog.
Now, if they had blasted the fog upwards, then THAT would have been news!
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
How can you tell it's from last year? Slashdot has never had the year displayed in any of the dates. And apparently this isn't considered a bug or even an oversight.
It has also been done in Vegas 8 years ago at the MGM Grand Hotel's EFX show (now defunct):
I was one of the designers of a MIDI Show Control-to-Allen-Bradley PLC controller specifically designed for this show. The EFX show used dozens of them. These boxes in turn were controlled by Amigas! by Richmod Sound Design's software.
The fog wall in the show was huge, and they would project a scene onto the fog while the actors and props would be moved into place. Then the fog would dissipate and the projected 'scene' would come to life.
--jeffy++
ipv6 is my vpn
One of our favorite uses: an image that people can walk through which looks just like a solid brick wall... exactly six inches in front of a real brick wall. Get your webcams ready.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
So now annoying teenagers can add hand-held fans on TOP of laser pointers as a way to disturb a movie. Fantastic.
NMG
The bad guys from Scooby-Doo have been doing this for 30 years!!
That's how all those "ghosts" fly.
I wonder how loud it is.
If you can create a "bent" or curved flow, you could create 3D images (at least from one side) with this technology. You could replay videos and project them on to the mist with pretty decent laser resolution. It's the whole "Help me Obi Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope" only in full size.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
As to the prior art, thye are not the first to have used fog as a screen. Many years ago we took a slide projector out to the riverbottom on a foggy night, right after the bars closed, and projected images onto the fogbank hanging near the road. A still of Godzilla got little response, but projecting a scantily clad barbarian maiden almost caused a wreck.
All you really need to do to fix the turbulence problem is to make two large panes of glass, the size of your intended display area. Hang them parallel and let the gas flow between them. The glass protects the fog from the surrounding air.
Nerd Rock In Progress
We folks in the live theatre world have been doing EXACTLY this for a couple of years now, as well as finding other ways to project still or moving images 'into thin air'. These guys simpy turned into a product one of the myriad ways which this has been done in the past...
Must admit, the touchscreen claim intrigues me...
As a Finn I sincerely hope that these guys can actually turn their invention to money. Besides Nokia, Finnish inventors and companies in general have failed in this -- even if they really had something valuable in their hands.
This is actually a repost from a few months back. I first saw it when they demoed it at an IT convention in Helsinki -the pictures don't quite tell the truth about the quality of the image, it's in fact a lot more stable and crisp than it might seem -and sticking your hand was neat, too, although it got me into trouble actually punching one of those ancient solid-monitors we still have at the office :) Anyway, from what I've heard (haven't been around there for a while), the quality has gotten even better nowadays. I wouldn't really start speculating about holographic displays yet. It's just 'cool.'
Marxist evolution is just N generations away!
OK, I get the fog, but is the image being created with a projector? If so, what kind? Is it just a standard front projector? How bright?
(I'm currently working for InFocus, so I've become more conscious of projectors lately and their nuances.)
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
is there a smog screen variant for los angeles residents?
Ever seen the virtual *sex act* videos where they try to make it like you're the recipient?
This technology brings virtual sex to a new level....
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Am I the only one who remembers this exact same thinge on seaQuest DSV. The show sucked and all but give credit where it's due.
In that video clip, I swear I saw Mark McKinney as Darrill, the artsy loser, from the kids in the hall. Maybe it's just the ponytail.
TM
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Any one else remeber seaQuest DSV?
.. sounds familiar now, eh?
Not the third season but the original first season with the computer display/holographic advisor in Capt. Nathan Bridgers quarters?
yeah
Code softly but carry a big magnet.
Go get a good DVD ripper, encode the movie at the "high quality" rate using the OpenDivX4 codec, wait 4 hours, play.. now look at the size of the movie.
How we know is more important than what we know.
This is just like that computer on Seaquest: DSV that the Captain would talk to