Seamless Video Walls

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Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday September 2, 2003 @03:43AM from the screen-the-size-of-my-wall dept.

ahfoo writes "A company called Seamless Display is shopping around a new way of hiding the seams in video walls that mostly relies on modifiying video drivers to achieve its effects. According to their press release they hide the edges between monitors with a bit of plastic film and compress the video at the edges to produce a more or less seamless image. " Really bizarre, but it looks interesting.

22 of 135 comments (clear)

Hope it's better than the last one... by Dr.+Manhattan · 2003-09-02 03:46 · Score: 4, Interesting

...that was mentioned on Slashdot.

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Folding LCD screens by Brahmastra · 2003-09-02 03:48 · Score: 4, Insightful

The best application for consumers looks like the folding LCD displays. It would be great to have handhelds with a folding screen without a perceptible seam. Finally it won't suck to play games on handhelds.
1. Re:Folding LCD screens by Oculus+Habent · 2003-09-02 03:58 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  There's still a perceptible seam, and the span is somewhat distorted. Not the greatest for details.
  
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Rear Projection by jhines0042 · 2003-09-02 03:48 · Score: 3, Interesting

Wouldn't a video wall be better served by having several rear projectors that line up perfectly rather than trying to eliminate the frame of a CRT?

It seems to me that with a good jig and a consistent set of projectors, and some good use of mirrors if depth is a problem, that you should be able to get a seemless image with very little work.

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1. Re:Rear Projection by Sphere1952 · 2003-09-02 03:56 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  You've got an extra room to devote to the task?
  
  I think computing paint would better serve the purpose. When will I be able to just paint a monitor onto my wall? (And I bet the fumes will be carinogenic.)
  
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2. Re:Rear Projection by CaptBubba · 2003-09-02 03:59 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  They wouldn't have to even line them up exactly.
  I saw a demonstration using a beowulf cluster (well, part of one) that was rendering a moving 3-d CAD model. They just threw the projectors so they were somewhat aligned, used a webcam and had one of the nodes look at the overlap and correct for the projector's misalignment in real time. ~20 other CPUs were doing the rendering, but it only took one to make the display come out right. I would imagine the same thing could be done for a rear-projection screen. As long as the projectors didn't get jostled after being observed by the computer it should work fine.
3. Re:Rear Projection by Aidtopia · 2003-09-02 04:20 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  This is a standard multi-image trick. It works with front or rear projection. To get the images truly seamless, you overlap the projection areas (anywhere from 10 to 50%) and use a grayscale gradient mask to blend the overlapping areas. This technique was perfected with those zillion-projector slide shows from the '80s.
  
  The trick lives on today with video projections. Dataton has a product (Watchout) which does it in real time with a network of computers. And, as another poster pointed out, aligning the projectors is less of an issue, since you can now use a cam and some extra cycles to warp the projected images rather than adjusting the projectors.
4. Re:Rear Projection by Dirk.Reiners · 2003-09-02 04:37 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  There are a bunch of these around, the keyword to look for is tiled display. It's been an active topic in the computer graphics and virtual reality community for the last couple years, and people have been building different sizes and using different alignment methods. The biggest ones I know are the NCSA 40 node and our 48 node system. Most of them are mono, there are two stereo-capable systems, one in Boston, the other one is ours.
  
  The problem with the "rough alignment, use computer vision to sort it out" approach is the overlap area. Current projectors have a pretty sucky contrast (black to white) ratio. In the overlap areas all the blacks are added together, so the actual black you get is already pretty bright and there's nothing you can do about it. That's why we decided to go the hard route and do exact alignment. It's hard, but it's doable, and the results are pretty cool.
  
  The presented method avoids that problem by design, so that's what makes it interesting, IMHO. Beside the fact that it doesn't need a separate air condition and 3 m back-projection space...
Psssh.... by JoeLinux · 2003-09-02 03:50 · Score: 4, Funny

Big deal. I'm wating for the DirectBrainX from Microsoft. Just plug directly into the base of your skull and watch your will to live drain away.

Blue screens now resulting in total loss of bowel functions!

*sniff* I'm getting misty just thinking about it.
Possibly already an irrelevant technology by heironymouscoward · 2003-09-02 03:51 · Score: 4, Interesting

OLEDs are almost there, they are already being used in small portable devices (cameras and phones). They can be scaled without the fabrication issues that hit CRTs and LCDs. There is a good chance that OLED screens will be the first consumer-ready wall screen system (the current best of breed being the projector).

But this looks fun, and it may be a good stopgap. I'm wondering whether it can be used to build (for instance) large LCD monitors for PCs...? I once had a portable that used two B&W LCDs to achieve a larger display area, but I've never seen this done with color LCDs.

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What I really wonder is.. by blankinthefill · 2003-09-02 03:54 · Score: 3, Funny

What does this mean for the MS Flight Simulator Groupie?!? Are we going to be getting entire "flight rooms" now? AHHHHH!!!!
Try draper as well by Stonent1 · 2003-09-02 03:56 · Score: 4, Interesting

www.draper.com Back when I installed Air Traffic Control simulators we used Draper screens. I was looking at the Draper site and they said they had seemless displays and this was about a year ago. We could get pretty seemless with the large screens that we had.
Oled's are they the saviour of lcd tech? by way2trivial · 2003-09-02 03:57 · Score: 3, Interesting

after reading the pieces on CDR's which use organic dyes, and the organic dyes don't last beacuse they break down, I wonder about the long term viability of Oled's. Aren't those organic components subject to the same rules of degradation as the organic dyes?

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Mirror by Talia+Starhawke · 2003-09-02 03:59 · Score: 4, Informative

Here's a Press Release...

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Technology.... by $exyNerdie · 2003-09-02 04:01 · Score: 3, Interesting

Well, it seems that they use a lens coating to correct image corners (could be affected by wear and tear). I thought it was ONLY a software based change in display drivers.
Reasonable, but not great, idea. by Animats · 2003-09-02 04:11 · Score: 4, Insightful

This is a plausible, although not great, idea. Optically expanding a display screen a bit to merge the edges have been tried before. It's possible to expand the whole image without parallax using a big fibre optic plate, but that approach is heavy and expensive. This approach apparently only messes with the edges, squeezing them digitally to compensate for an optical device (probably a plastic Fresnel lens) that expands them to cover the gap. The compressed region also needs an intensity boost, since fewer pixels are filling more area. From the pictures, they didn't do that, so there's a dim line at the joint.
We'll have to see how good it is, and whether it looks any good from an off-axis viewpoint.
"Doctor, I want a system where everything comes out of one hole." Mike Todd, producer, to the head of American Optical, discussing wide-screen projection.
Here's another article on it w/picture by FreeLinux · 2003-09-02 04:12 · Score: 4, Informative

Here is another atricle about it that includes a picture of the display. This one isn't Slashdotted.
Re:Down? by bighoov · 2003-09-02 04:16 · Score: 3, Funny

Could it be that people are actually (shudder) RTFA before posting?

It's the end of /. as we know it!
Re:Right on! by mopslik · 2003-09-02 04:19 · Score: 5, Funny

One word: PORN!

I don't know about you, but I believe that some things are better not seen blown up 20X.
Now only if by Bruha · 2003-09-02 04:29 · Score: 3, Funny

They put in a few more dollars on that webserver and their slashdotting would of been seamless.
A leetle Mirror by teamhasnoi · 2003-09-02 04:44 · Score: 3, Informative

Here's one page with some pics.
And the mostly content free first page.
This will be a good test of my provider :)
It's called Edge Blending by green+pizza · 2003-09-02 05:08 · Score: 3, Informative

I've seen SGI and Barco (the projector company) do this for over a decade on their massive multi-projector screens. (As have Panoram and others...) It's a combination of software (generally image overlap) and hardware (soft edges) that produces an invisible seam. With modern high-dollar projectors there isn't even a noticable difference in brightness anywhere on the screen.

Keep in mind that these sort of professional "reality centers" generally have very precise and predictable optics, these aren't the sort of projects you can buy at Staples or Frys. Cheaply made LCD projectors had a nasty habit of discoloring and changing their output look over time, especially when run for several hours every day. DLP has made a life a lot easier, but the cheap projectors still can't handle continuous use. Shop around and talk to the experts before you plunk a bunch of money down on an array of projectors.