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Projecting Data on a Sphere
necro81 writes "The NYTimes has an article in today's Science section that describes a four-projector system that displays images on a spherical screen. The Science on a Sphere system, developed at the Goddard Space Flight Center and used in some planetariums, can display and animate vast amounts of visual data from the Earth, Moon, Sun, and the other planets. The sphere is suspended by thin wires, and animating the image data gives the illusion of a free-floating, rotating world."
Since the application of this thing can easily require building a custom sphere, this seems a more cost-effective way to me.
It's a planetarium turned inside-out. Or the offspring of a mating of a planetarium and a Klein bottle. In other words, it's a light trap :)
There are not one but two such displays at Seattle Sci-Fi Museum http://www.sfhomeworld.org/ One of them uses four projectors to project movie clips on a large sphere. I'm not sure about the second one since there are not projectors around (I suspect there is one inside) but it shows the surfaces of famous sci-fi planets. You can see this one at http://www.sfhomeworld.org/exhibits/brave_new_worl ds/index.asp
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actually, by combining this technology with this technology you could have a pretty cool visual representation of the earth and it's current space traffic.
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Let's say you had two projectors, one pointing at the north pole and one at the south. The resolution would be terrible near the equator, because a very small part of the projected image would cover a large part of the globe surface.
In order for the resolution to be consistent over the entire globe, you have to either intentionally reduce the resolution of the projection near the poles, or add additional projectors.
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Who wants to open the pinata?
Meh, a real sig would take too long, and I have an MMORPG to play with....
Either of those options is gonna be some sort of elastic force - the sphere will bounce. Even a slight bounce in a normal projector screen is quite noticable. I can only imagine it would be a lot worse when you're worrying about the alignment of three projectors.
Could this be giving birth to the beginnings of 3D halographic techonology?
No, that was the Xbox.
There are some arses here at the office that could now be used for IMAX.
All jokes about the Deathstar attack aside, I actually had the privilege of seeing this display firsthand this past year. I was attending the Annual Meeting of the American Meteorological Society in Atlanta, and NOAA was showing this display with information about the 2005 hurricane season. It is quite a large display, but it has the capability of showing large amounts of data in an entertaining and easy to understand way.
Here are a few pictures of the actual display in operation...
http://community.webshots.com/album/551340290QQkDQ E/