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3D Animations In Mid-Air Using Plasma Balls
An anonymous reader clues us to research at Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology that has produced the ability to make animations by creating small plasma balls in mid-air. The technology doesn't use vapor or strange gases, just lasers to heat up oxygen and nitrogen molecules above the device: up to 1,000 brilliant dots per second, which makes smooth motion possible. When the tech improves it could be used for street signs or advertising.
I, for one, welcome our new lethally hot gas based advertisement overlords...
I'm not clicking that link.
Lol? Article is from february last year ;o.
"Improved laser technology will enable images to be projected at greater distances and with more color, so we may soon see 3D images floating above our city skylines."
Just be sure not to look directly at them.
Till the new nike or coke ad hits a planes and lights it on fire!
~
Here's the press release it links to. Sadly both the article and the press release are from February 2006...
Indeed!
It uses high power lasers to heat the air into a "plasma" when running it has the sounds of crackles as mini explosions occur.
Oh yeah, that's a display I want. Instead of the cat blocking the screen, the cat bursts into flames. How the heck am I going to explain that one to the wife?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You said Plasma Balls !!!!!
Hah, who sees an amazing technology like this and immediately begins thinking about its potential use for advertising? To me, its use in advertising seems like the only downside to this technology..
"Guys!! I just heard that they came up with a way to project images directly in to your brain! Awesome, think of the *commercials*!! "
"'Yrch!' said Legolas, falling into his own tongue."
While it's at least mildly interesting I had a real problem with one of the linked sources. Not the linked source itself but the obviously photoshopped cruise liner.
What the hell is that all about? I know that it may be able to swing this in the future but let's not get out of hand. Not to mention that my 12 year old nephew is a better photoshop hacker.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
So am I finally going to be able to play holo-chess against a wookie?
So a giant holo-shark appearing in the air abouve you and then twisting above you and closing its jaws right on you can be created in the air with lasers? I need a Delorean and a 1955 sports almanac. Also I am going to a corner drug store to get some plutonium unless Mr. Fusion is in business already.
You can't handle the truth.
Forget it, that's not the early adopters.
It'll be used for video games and pr0n. We all know who gets tech first. The problem I see is that it heats up they air to the point that when you get too excited and attempt to touch... You loose a hand or other appendage.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
Sadly, the article doesn't say much about the technology of the device. Can the size of the balls of light be changed? Will colored images ever be a reality - might it be possible using a sealed chamber and changing the composition of the gas? What are the ratings of the laser diodes used in this? Would it be possible to use a laser diode from a DVD burner to construct a homebrew version of this?
For now, it remains a nifty demonstration, and nothing more.
THE FUTURE HAS ARRIVED.
I'm not sure this is the correct article. My PHP quota isn't that short...
(In other words [with piggybacking], mirror please?)
Make me a portable version of this and I can finally have my friken LIGHTSABER!
Do Or Do Not, There Is No Spoon, There Is Only Zuul. Everything in the above post is probably opinion.
This tech is soooooo Siggraph 2006...
Sigpilot : I'm in the pipe, 5 by 5.
that everyone on THIS PAGE is wearing goggles... what good is mid air 3D animation if you can't even look at it without eye protection?
Also I would like to add everytime something cool comes out like this the article is all good until the bottom where they have to go and say it's good for street signs and advertising
See also: "This enables the display to be curved around objects like street furniture - handy for advertising and other promotional purposes."
-From the article about the LG Oil/water display
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Trying to fix or change something only guarantees and perpetuates it's existence
As much as I like the idea of being assailed with even more ads everywhere I look, this seems to be a very environmentally harmful idea. Along with harmful gases being produced by plasma discharges, it would be noisy as well, not to mention that displays like this would give off UV light as well, just like an electric arc. Bad idea.
I was wondering when Stephen Baxter's tech for those Xeelee books was going to get here.
as an aside, I love his stuff. no one ends a universe quite like him.
It was impressively loud and bright when running. For some reason they couldnt run it continuously but turned it one for a few minutes every half hour.
Although the article linked is old (come on it would not be slashdot if not, would it) here is a link to the new article from less than month ago (that I suppose should have been linked to originally - maybe update the summary) http://www.pinktentacle.com/2007/07/aist-improves- 3d-projector/
don't be around me when you finally blow!
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
This is a wonderful idea. After all, advertisements are never a waste of resources, and nothing says "green" like smoldering hot balls of glowing plasma that people will ignore once the awesomeness of it wears off.
At this rate it's just a matter of time before they laser color the moon into a giant Pepsi logo.
Not only is this press release over a year old, they had this at SIGGRAPH '06. It flickered, wasn't that smooth, and was really, really loud. It's cool in concept, but not that impressive in reality.
says the date of the research
o t_line/hot_line_13_2.html
n shi_TF_e.html
http://www.aist.go.jp/aist_e/aist_today/2006_21/h
The Group responsible for the device
http://unit.aist.go.jp/photonics/english/group/bu
Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope!
Well, first, this is sadly old news. The technology was actually exhibited at SIGGRAPH 2006 in Boston last July. It's pretty cool, but I'm not sure it would ever be put to practical use, at least in its current form.
For one thing, it's loud! Every plasma ball makes a sizzling pop as it winks in and out of existence. Now magnify that by thousands of times as it scans out a 3D wireframe... the entire area for quite a distance surrounding fills with an ear-splitting sound of angry electric bees. There was talk of putting it on buildings to run electronic billboards in cities, but anyone within a few blocks would need ear protection to co-exist with it!
Very cool stuff, but we're a loooong way from 3D open-air advertising.
Notice: Your mouse has been moved. Windows will now restart so this change can take effect.
There's video of the projector in action here
Meow meow skin graft meow!
http://youtube.com/watch?v=He2QTpelAjE
...plasma balls in mid-air is one of the things needed for a fusion reactor.
The game.
When you heat up an oxygen-nitrogen gas mix to those temperatures, you will get nitrous oxide and ozone. This is not just a problem with cool little sparky devices. Hydrogen-oxygen fuel systems (think: Saturn V) may produce only water vapor, but at such a high temperature from the exhaust, the oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere does its thing and... nothing you'd want to breathe.
And ozone, while very nice for blocking UV rays, is a carcinogen when inhaled.
THE WORLD WILL KILL YOU! film at eleven, Jim Cummings narration.
That being said, I'd certainly love to see a demo. If they can somehow deal with the ozone/NO2 hazard, this could be a blast. "Help me, Obi-Wan, you're my only hope"
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
Plasma displays?
This is very, very cool.
And I see it ending very, very badly, for some new Darwin Award recipient.
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
Now the DSP technology to kill the laser a microsecond before they cat gets burned. Also will need noise cancellation technology to create noise to cancel out the sound of the popping. With these two technologies, the lasers really can create a shark inches from your face, and DSP software will kill the laser before you have a chance to physically come into contact with it...
I've read Slashdot for the last 5 years, and now I start posting... Go figure
Yeah, let's ionize the air in a column!
Is anyone else reminded of the scene in "2015" in Back to the Future 2? With all the advertisements very much like this? At this rate they may exist in 2015.
As for flying Deloreans, the verdict is still out.
10 FILL MUG WITH COFFEE
20 DRINK COFFEE
30 GOTO 10
Growing up in a mosquito infested area, I often thought that someday, an anti-mosquito laser system could be developed.
This technology could possibly do that. If it can focus a laser on a particular spot long enough to make plasma out of air, it can zap a skeeter!
And you thought a bug-zapper was entertaining...
Did anyone else notice this ? On the linked article source, look at the links on either side of the article:
e -shaped-daikon-radish/a ll-indicates-bumper-rice-crop-to-come/
http://www.pinktentacle.com/2006/02/marilyn-monro
and
http://www.pinktentacle.com/2006/02/frozen-waterf
Way to identify the hard science mag!
CHA..well it did, now it just says HA.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
As Bela Lugosi said in Ed Wood:
I'm not going near that goddamn thing!
Education is the silver bullet.
So something like mosquito point defense? I love it.
Beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master. -Anonymous
Come on, 640 brilliant dots per second should be enough for anybody!
So, what would happen if I stuck my hand in there? Burned, melted, exploded, what?
This is something that I thought about over the years: how to get a focal plane of sorts to exist in 3D. It seems that the obvious answer was to focus lasers on points in a gas filled volume of space. I'm pretty sure that this will, in ten or so years, finally give us working holographic displays. At the moment, I must assume that the power consumption must be very high in order to ionise the gas. Perhaps placing this system in a glass box with gasses that are more easily ionised might be cheaper? I also wonder how the problems of colour and gradiation will be solved, but I'm pretty sure they will be.
Cool, now all we need is a miniaturized magnetic accelerator to shoot the plasma balls. And a man-portable power source.
... but will it do the Death star and show the weakness.....
If one of these laser devices is powerful enough to heat air into plasma, what's going to happen to the poor sap who stands in the wrong place and catches one of the beams in the eye? I've got a 125mw visible light laser that's enough to cause eye damage instantly with exposure over a considerable range, and it's still a long ways away from creating any blooming effect (which is what this seems to describe). Seems to me this invention won't be safe for non-laboratory use no matter how you slice it.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=He2QTpelAjE
:)
Kind of hard to see what they're doing at first, you might think it's just projected onto the wall, but then the camera pans around and you now see the lights against an open window. Yup, 3D. About at the level of pong right now, monochromatic voxels doing simple stuff, but you can easily extrapolate where they're going to go with it. Return of the Jedi Death Star display within 10 years? I think so.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Yeah, hot balls of plasma used for advertising displays. That sounds like a really great idea. NOT.
But then, so is the wife. The cat takes after her in that regard.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
...are not the Plasma Balls you are looking for, move along.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
not going to happen... they'd rather use the tech to pound you with advertising than actually doing something useful.
I think we are still in the present.
http://www.texol.co.uk/texol_mosquito.htm
Deleted
Slashdot must have a huge backlog...
I'm reading this thread on a 3d plasma ball display so I'm getting a kick out of these replies..
Can you imagine the crazy pyrotechnics that could be achieved with this sort of thing?
:P
Heh... it would be fun to take one of these things and set it up near a village of primitives. You could be the face of God
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
That is fucking COOL!
:). Although I think the latter will be challenging.
I never thought I'd see the light of day that we get "holographic" displays. Of course, this is not holographic, but it's everything the movies portrayed as an imaging device of the future.
Let's hope this develops into something with high resolution, colour and a little less noise
B.
Every experiment which ends in a big bang is a good experiment.
Good thing this article is from 2006. C'mon Slashdot...
[%] Cingular Ringtones
And the noise is not necessarily a problem. Consider all of the other noise occuring in a confrontation /battle. This actually might be an advantage.
One last thing. If the other side accidentally gets in the way of the laser without protection - so what. I know that sounds callous, but "don't ya know there's a war on"? If a relatively minor burn occurs, or some folks are blinded, well, there are worse things.
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Any problem can be made unsolvable if there are enough meetings made to discuss it.
No one seems to notice that this article is from last year...
Actually, all it needs to do is create a glowing plasma ball out of reach and leave it there. It would be a built-in bug zapper as it attracts the bugs and zaps them both in a single package. No need to try to track and shoot the things...
I guess my regular balls are getting less valuable by the second!
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Last Halloween I saw a setup with an electric guitar used to modulate (in this case turn on and off rapidly) a Tesla Coil, with the result that the bolts of electricity flying off the coil didn't just match the music, they were the music. It had a very harsh square-wave sound, but it fit perfectly with the visual display and by combining two of the coolest uses for electricity ever it reached new heights of awesome.
They could probably do the same with this by changing the rate of the pulses. Though they'd have to get higher than 1000 bursts per second unless they're just using it for the bass track.
The enemies of Democracy are
I think I saw this demonstrated at SIGGRAPH 2006. If it wasn't specifically this, it was another, virtually identical device. I know this is first-gen, but I don't yet think it's cut out for advertising. The resolution of the device I saw was extremely low, but I presume that will improve; what's more striking is that it was horribly noisy. When operating, it produced continuous arcing, cracking and buzzing noises... a sound somewhere between the noise of a vibrating metal tray full of ball bearings and a couple dozen stun guns being fired. Given how it works, I'm not sure they can make it any quieter.
If we don't actively track and kill mosquitoes with laser beams, then the terrorists have won
Fucking Cool!
The propane tank is used to generate CO2 (queue global warming rants here). Mosquitos are attracted to CO2 because that is how they locate their prey. When they fly close enough, then the vacuum cleaner comes into play. Zapping them is no good because they don't like ozone (so the plasma ball suggested elsewhere would not attract mosquitos - it would kill lots of moths, however). To be effective in protecting your event, the CO2 generator needs to be upwind. Mosquitos follow CO2 plumes upwind toward their victims using biotech similar to lobsters (compare the concentration detected between two antenna and turn toward the stronger, the greater the difference, the greater the adjustment - simple and effective). Those downwind of the BBQ will likely head toward that instead, so put the BBQ off to one side relative to the breeze.
...on this contraption is Princess Leia stooping over and pleading, "Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope".
wanna watch scantily clothed Leila dance in the holo movie :)
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
One day I will play space chess just like Luke and Chewy did. A long time ago...
"Patience is not a virtue, it's a waste of time."
I like the way you think.
But what we really need is a way to control mosquitos so that they can swarm to form advertisements. Then we'd get the laser bug zapper for free.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
Put me down for a back-order, I'll buy one.
As a bonus, once these are over our cities, the deadly laser beams will protect us from any terrorist-controlled aircraft that don't know the special route navigate through them without bursting into flames. We'll probably have fewer pigeon problems as well.
And space is one of the things needed for a space elevator!
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
You mean I really wasn't alone when I thought about an anti-mosquito laser system??? This is either a coincidence or runs through the mind of every tech-oriented brain sitting around in the countryside.
Hell, you'd probably fool non-"primitives" too.
I remember it from a skit on Not Necessarily the News on HBO, in reference to Reagan's Star Wars defense system.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Yup! Just have a tiny globe sitting on a pedestal on a table, with radar tracking systems! AM-Ray! Anti-Mosquito Raygun!
Oooo, interface to your box and all of a sudden. Booya. Whole new meaning to space invaders.
How to turn a 100-billion-watt femtosecond-pulse laser and a MAGLite(tm) into a laser pointer that can also be used to pop balloons and scare pigeons
Think of the (itchy) children!
I had a professor in college who felt that anytime a new media would take off, it was usually thanks to pr0n. An example he gave was VHS v. Betamax. The Sony guys didn't want their precious format to be corrupted, whereas the VHS guys just let anyone use their format. If this thing has potential for advertising or any kind of media, and if p0rn grabs it and runs, it will be here to stay.
In other countries, they are actually developing USEFUL stuff. Here in the United States, we just pull out Kindergarten science "experiments", give it a technical name, and call it a "...radical new development/innovation/breakthrough".
BTW, I wonder how much money those idiots blew in creating that "new" (their words, not mine) monofin. If wasting money was a skill, we'd be geniuses.
I wonder what the next multi-billion dollar technical "breakthrough" will be..... Lemme guess:
"Innovative Environmentally-Freindly Future Time Distortion Device": A pure, solid titanium paddle with an ultra-elastic string tied to the center of the paddle at one end, and a "super-rubber" ball at the other. Rubber "Comfort Grips" optional. Comes with complimentary set of X-Ray Specs (Not "real" X-Ray, but they give you magic powers that let you fool everyone into thinking they are!)
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
well we don't need to wait until halo3 to finish the job,
we can just make our own plasma guns now. a tank of liquid that acts like water gun and beam at the solution to ignite a plasma bolt.
Am I the only one who remembers this article as it was originally published in early 2006? Am I the only one noticing the date of the article?
Not a mosquito zapper. Mosquito Hunter (TM). Everyone picks up a wireless controller on their way to the back yard, sit down, and fly their little glowing fighter planes around the yard. You lose points for targeting a dragonfly.
Pay no attention to the geek behind the curtain!
I always wanted to make one of these! Passive sonar to locate the bug, and then a laser tracking system to set the little bugger on fire. :) Never got past the safety aspect though - I mean, we're talking about using a laser strong enough to punch a hole in a mozzie, being aimed around the room and fired by a system that could well just decide based on a strange echo to pop you in the eye. I'll take itchy over permanent blindness, tyvm. :/
;)
Other ideas were the same tracking system attached to a nerf gun, an automated micro-water-jet system (think an archer fish), or even something funky with focussed sound waves and constructive interference.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
YES!
Help Me! I'm trapped in the tubes! Oh noes! Here comes a internet!
It would seem the frequency will have to be raised by a couple orders of magnitude to do anything beyond basic wireframes -- at that point perhaps it could be modulated in a manner similar to the Singing Tesla Coil, and provide not only the video, but the soundtrack as well? The sound would even be coming from the "surface" of the perceived object, no matter where the observer is.
Holographic people may turn out to be untouchable in a completely different way than depicted on Star Trek.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
And you could initiate mating festivals by playing pr0n. Pr0n from the heavens! You know you like it..
Doctor: "Do you smoke after sex?"
Woman: "I don't know-- I never looked!"
a short and somewhat uninspiring clip of the display in action... no pyramids here tho. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He2QTpelAjE
Heating air with lasers? Extremely cool, unfortunately the process creates a significant amount of ozone, which is extremely cancerogenous. Ozone is only good if it created a few kilometers from the surface ;)
hmm... Another thing that might work could be to have multiple sources for the energy.. (i'm no laser expert :)
:)
But my idea, have a system with maybe 20-30 lasers that all focus their low-power beams on a single point. 10x20mW lasers should(?) have a total effect of 200mW, but ofcourse if you hit different parts of the bug it will probably not have any effect on the bug itself... Maybe put 10 lasers in a row instead of all around the room could make it a bit easier to hit the same spot, but then again, if the system thought your eye where a mosquito...
... 3d holographic battle chess is released. Then I'll take notice. I'll still let the Wookie win.
Why, oh why, didn't I take the Blue Pill?
Yow! Do NOT sit too close to the tv kids!
(Boldly using to and too two times and getting it right too! They're not gonna believe their eyes when they see it there!)
To boldly use to and too two times and get it right too! They're not gonna believe their eyes when they see it there!
That sounds a lot like the system I imagined as a kid.
Mosquitoes make a particular noise when they are "hunting". That is the annoying sound that keeps you awake at night. A tracking system that homes in on that whine, but with IR to avoid humans and pets, and maybe millimeter radar for fine adjustment, could work.
we can finally cross the beams?
I have a sudden urge for a cokie-mokie!