Making A Screen... Out Of Thin Air?

[Janak Parekh]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=581&ncid=581&e=2&u=/nm/20030910/tc_nm/column_pluggedin_dc' target='_blank'>http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...mn_pluggedin_dc</a><br /><br /></div>"In a museum in Tampere, Finland, Ismo Rakkolainen's fog machine conjures up the Mona Lisa on an invisible sheet of water particles. Thousands of miles away in Hermosa Beach, California, a graduate student passes his hand through an image of a DNA strand produced -- apparently out of thin air -- by a modified video projector. The two inventions represent the latest front in advanced computer displays -- eliminating the screen altogether."<br /><br />We've seen it in movies over the years; now, it might slowly become reality. You can read more about the two technologies at <a href="http://www.io2technology.com/">IO2 Technology</a> and <a href="http://www.fogscreen.com/">FogScreen inc.</a> Neither appear to be holographic. Both might contribute to the future of ubiquitous displays and ubiquitous computing, though.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/parekh-20030912-displays.jpg" />

[portus]

Amazing technology! Minority Report interative crime DB comes true!

[Busdriver]

Gawd, I love technology. :mrgreen:

[reydiodj]

- isn't this similar in concept to Disneyland's Fantasmic (where animation is projected on spray walls of mist/water) as well as old seance parlor tricks (where images were cast upon plumes of incense smoke)?

[isilver]

Cool. I want one.

[Gremmie]

- isn't this similar in concept to Disneyland's Fantasmic (where animation is projected on spray walls of mist/water)

Wow, I'm not sure if I want to indirectly attribute this to drug-inspired animation.

[Fitch]

This photograph is from SigGraph in San Diego, where I saw it a couple months ago. It's quite misleading. Although the article said that it's an "invisible sheet of water particles," what I saw was a very visible sheet of white fog. And not so much a sheet as a thick wall of cloudy, falling fog, maybe a cm thick. The wall was so pillowy and turbulent that the resolution of the image was only good enough to make out large shapes and pictures, no words or small icons.

Don't get me wrong, I stayed and looked and played with the exhibit for a good 5+ minutes. I could touch it, run my hand through it and try to stir up the falling fog, and talked to the booth guy. It didn't feel like anything, not cold nor warm. I think it would be great technology for a museum or amusment ride. Hopefully, they can get the screen to be turbulent-free, but for now, it wouldn't even make a good clear enough TV to read something.

Again, STILL COOL, just bothered by the misleading photograph.

[caywen]

This is basically still a CRT, just with a vertically mounted projector and a bunch of fog. This technology is not durable. Any amount of wind or nearby activity causes the image to waver or disappear altogether.

This classifies as one of those "cool, but not the future" technologies. Engineers need to find a way to make a point glow in mid air. This water vapor thing sidesteps a problem but is a dead end.

I don't even think we're ready for this yet. We should be concentrating on making flat TV's thinner, lighter, and cheaper. I'd rather have my display on a device that I know will keep displaying a rock-solid image regardless of how much wind there is. I don't care to stick my hand through the image.

[Kirkaiya]

I think there are other technologies that are being worked on for creating displays in thin air; some of them involve changing some property of the air above the projecting device, such as inducing an electrostatic charge, that might enable pictures to be shown without the "fog" business.

i've read about technologies being worked on that do things with plain air, so this might not be as far off as some people think (especially for advertising, which doesn't need incredible resolution)