Tag Archives: projection

An 8-Foot Inflatable TV Yard Decoration That Plays Scenes from “A Christmas Story”

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While you might not shoot your eyes out, you could certainly melt your retinas sitting too close while watching scenes from A Christmas Story on this giant 8-foot inflatable television yard decoration. Fra-gee-lay — it must be Italian.

Available from Amazon or The Home Depot (affiliate links), the Christmas yard decoration uses “advanced, high-tech image mapping to play five scenes from A Christmas Story and four exciting transitions within the exact shape of the Airblown Inflatable TV.” It also includes the audio/video hookups so you can play your own movies on the television out of season. But please, try to keep things PG in the front yard.

So is this is the Christmas yard decoration that’s going to make my house the talk of the neighborhood this year? No, just like every year that’s going to be the rusted out 1972 Ford Condor II RV I park in the driveway just like Cousin Eddie’s in Christmas Vacation. Every January I swear to my neighbors that I’ve finally sold it, but every Thanksgiving weekend I have it towed back out of storage and parked at the end of the driveway. They say they hate it but I know they love it.

[via DudeIWantThat]

These Projection Headlamps Shine Moving Images Onto the Road

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While wandering the expansive show floor at the 2019 Tokyo Motor Show, I came across a pretty interesting technology which could someday find its way into vehicles. Basically, it’s a projection system that would allow vehicles to cast moving images onto the ground in front of them.

High tech headlight maker Koito Manufacturing was showing off their Road Projection Lighting system, which is designed to communicate with people in front of your vehicle, as well as to improve safety for the driver. Among the potential use cases for the technology are the ability to display the width of the vehicle for improved navigation through narrow spaces, as well as the ability to indicate the direction in which a pedestrian has been detected in front of the car.

The system could also be used to display information for pedestrians, such as the location of an emergency shelter in the event of a disaster. Of course the most obvious use is also the least useful – displaying cool animated light shows on the road ahead. You can check out a demo video of the technology below:

At this point, the design is still in the prototype stage, but it seems like the safety features could definitely be useful, and someday find their way into a production vehicle.

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Mercedes’ latest high-tech concept car is a throwback to 1901

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Many of Mercedes' concept cars are focused squarely on the future, but its newest example goes back in time even as it aims to go forward. The automaker has unveiled a Vision Mercedes Simplex concept car that hearkens back to the 1901 Mercedes 35 PS...

Lightform lets you design in augmented reality!

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A camera, a projector, and some incredible engineering come together to make an AR experience that literally drops jaws. The Lightform is a device that pairs with your projector and your work-station (a desktop or laptop). It captures the surfaces ahead of it, detecting objects, and allowing you to layer incredibly accurate animations on them, via a projector and an incredibly easy-to-use software.

Your own projection mapping tool, the Lightform is a small device that takes years of experience and skill out of something that requires talent, precision, and experience. With its intelligent structured light scanning, Lightform can create a remarkably-detailed 3D depth map, giving the software everything it needs to quickly create animations and graphics on 3D objects by simply selecting them and dragging and dropping animations. Lightform even captures 2D graphics, allowing you to bring paintings and prints to life too. Lightform’s companion software for your laptop takes all the hard work out of projection mapping, letting you select and animate objects with incredible ease, and even control/trigger animations from your smartphone, or via a smart speaker.

Not just a tool to make incredible installations that feel like they’re breathing with life, the Lightform can make a spectacular marketing tool, bringing brands, products, and exhibitions alive as 3D objects get wrapped with breath-taking moving visuals… and all it takes is a baton-shaped gadget!

Designer: Lightform

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Projection is the ideal medium for Gustav Klimt’s electric art

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Austrian artist Gustav Klimt is celebrated for his boldly-colored paintings that marry portrait, decorative, symbolic and abstract art forms. Nowadays, they sell for vast fortunes at auction, making it difficult to see a comprehensive collection in o...

Real-time tracking and projection mapping keeps getting better

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Japanese creative studio P.I.C.S. have set a mindbending new standard for real-time tracking and projection mapping with their latest visual creation, EXISDANCE. The technology has been around for a while, although it arguably first captured the mai...

Gatebox Holographic Assistant Price, Release Date Announced

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I have a feeling that the Gatebox is exactly how Krieger got started with that holographic Japanese girl that follows him around on Archer. We talked a bit about the Gatebox early this year when the oddity first surfaced. There were key facts we didn’t have at that time though. Namely we didn’t know how much it would cost, or when you could get one.

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Now it looks like it will launch in a Japanese version first and will sell for ¥298,000, or about $2600 (USD) in December 2017. There will apparently be an English version of the Gatebox later, but with shipping it comes to around $3,000. I guess virtual robot girlfriends that can control your home aren’t cheap.

To refresh your memory, Gatebox lets you can talk to the holographic figure inside a glass tube. Its array of sensors include a camera, microphone, motion sensor, warmth and moisture sensors, luminance sensor, and touch buttons. So it’s more like it’s more like a pricey Google Home or Amazon Echo than an actual robot, since it can’t get up and move around.

 

[via PCmag]

The Coolest Projection Mapping Tech Yet

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Projection mapping can offer up some pretty cool visuals. The technique combines using specially designed projections which line up with the surfaces they’re being projected on. But up until now, most projection mapping has been done on either fixed or predictably moving rigid surfaces.

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This amazing new technology allows projection mapping to be done in real time against moving objects with unpredictable deformations. The result is images which can bend and flex on surfaces as complex as moving fabric or a sheet of paper blowing in the wind. Check it out in action in the video below:

The technology was developed by engineers at the Ishikawa Watanabe Laboratory, who say it can dynamically adjust images up to 1000 times per second, with just a 3ms delay, so the visuals appear to adapt to their projection surfaces immediately.

I’m not sure of the practical applications for this other than interactive installations and performance, but it’s still really cool.

[via The Awesomer]