Video Screen in Thin Air

Agent Provocateur writes "CNN has a story about inventions in advanced computer displays -- eliminating the screen altogether."Ever since the movie 'Star Wars' came out and there was a distress call from Princess Leia," -- generated in thin air by the robot R2D2 -- "people all over the world have been wanting one of these." While unlikely to replace the desktop computer monitor, so-called walk-through displays could eventually be put to use in product showrooms and museums."

Comments

How?

[grub]

The machine modifies the air above a video projector

That tantalizing bit of information is all that is said about how it works. Does anyone know if it shoots a thin mist or fog to project the image on? One would imagine so, so using one of these displays in a room with active ventilation may screw up the image as the fog is blown around.

Re:How?

[electromaggot]

The article mentions two technologies. One is the fog screen (as seen at SIGGRAPH), where the fog unit hangs from the ceiling and its clearly-visible vapor flows downward.

This other technology seems to involve a "sit on your desk" unit, out of which some kind of vapor appears to blow upwards. They have three videos showing this on their website (IO2 Technology) although it's light on technical specifics. The vids are filmed from in front of the unit, which seems to have a more extensive projection system hiding back behind it -- which as the guy moves his hand into the image, you can see projecting bright light up onto his arm. The "sheet" of vapor is surprisingly transparent, but you can notice its "laminar flow" being disrupted by his hand movement.

I, too, have my questions: What the vapor is and if it's toxic or messy... and how he'll do 3D (which is implied as being the next step) because the technology I see is basically a 2D "screen" and a long way from 3D.

I can see where this is going

[sixteenraisins]

If these 3-D "images" can be manipulated by hand, this technology becomes infintely more valuable - after all, some cheesy videogames were using 3-D holo-type displays back in the 80's, but without the hand-manipulation ability.

I can see this being used for training surgeons, bomb squads, etc. - any type of high risk sort of profession where learning on a "screen" you can manipulate with your hands either poses a threat or isn't something you can easily reproduce in situ.

William