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Displays Media Television Technology Science

Projecting Video On Curved Surfaces 177

Posted by timothy from the angle-dependent dept.
Jochen Bedersdorfer writes "According to golem.de, a research project in the area of Augmented Reality created a technology to project videos onto arbitrary existing screen surfaces, like wallpapered walls or window curtains. ... Quite awesome. Now I can use this ugly corner in my living room effectively."
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Projecting Video On Curved Surfaces More

Projecting Video On Curved Surfaces

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  • Imagine (Score:4, Funny)

    by foidulus ( 743482 ) * on Wednesday August 11, 2004 @08:45AM (#9938914)
    being able to project porn onto boobs! The possibilities are limitless

  • Omnimax @ Home? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Viral Fly-by ( 662186 ) <ross@truman.edu> on Wednesday August 11, 2004 @08:49AM (#9938944) Homepage
    With the rapid expansion of relatively high-end (5|6|7).1 surround sound stereo equipment in homes that is beginning to be joined by HDTV, could a technology like this bring a new option to table? Could we have something like omnimax theatres in our homes?
    • I'm not sure that there's really a market for this in the home - most people get large tvs or use flat walls/screens for a home theatre and I don't see that changing, if only because it looks better normally.

  • Interior Decorating from Slashdot (Score:5, Funny)

    by lukewarmfusion ( 726141 ) on Wednesday August 11, 2004 @08:49AM (#9938947) Homepage Journal
    You have an ugly corner in your living room, and you're going to "improve" it by projecting some arbitrary image onto it?

    Try paintings. Or a ficus.

  • Just Another... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Just another way to making visual media more exciting to enjoy. Now all we need is for the people producing the media to make something worth watching.

  • curved surfaces? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by deathazre ( 761949 ) <mreedsmith@gmail.com> on Wednesday August 11, 2004 @08:51AM (#9938969)
    The problem with projecting an image onto a non-flat surface is you can only get it to look proper from one small area. Anywhere else and it's still distorted.
    • Not true. Most Projectors have shape adjustments to compensate for the shape of the wall, alot like the fine tuning settings on your monitor
    • The comment above shows that the site wasn't read/understood before posting.

      The projector (both in stills and on the avaliable film) compensates for both surface color and configuration automatically and applies the transformation on a pixel-by-pixel basis. Good idea, IMHO. Sure seems to work. Seems to be arbitrarily flexible, to first order.

      There are definitely artifacts, but they seem to follow curved edges - not surprising when one realizes that pixels are finite and rectangular.

      I wonder how the re

      • Watch me shoot my mouth off. Sorry - Parent is right after all. I sound like "Leave it to Beaver".

        That being said - just sit where you can see best. Same as I do watching movies on my laptop.

        • That being said - just sit where you can see best. ... but I hate watching TV alone. I want to trade comments, or at least glances, with someone else.

  • Well done. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Devar ( 312672 ) on Wednesday August 11, 2004 @08:51AM (#9938970) Homepage Journal
    Good one guys, you just slashdotted Germany.
    • The link to Experiments in the vaults of castle Scharfenstein sounded interesting, but it died before I could check it. I guess someone decided that they just had to watch that 22M movie.

    • Re:Well done. (Score:2, Interesting)

      by bmf033069 ( 149738 )
      On the topic of Slashdotting, I wonder if it is possible to include a link-quality-meter into the header of a story. It would be good to know beforehand that the site was heading downward, as I'm really tired of clicking on links that are never going to come up.

      A more general solution would be to do a ping through to the site when you mouse over a link and show the results as a hover tip. I'm sure that this might already be a Firefox extension already as some very useful ones have been popping up recently.

  • Working link (for now) (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 11, 2004 @08:58AM (#9939014)
    Nonslashdotted link (in German, though) [golem.de]

  • Solution looking for a problem? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GillBates0 ( 664202 ) on Wednesday August 11, 2004 @08:58AM (#9939016) Homepage Journal
    Video projectors will play a major role in future home entertainment and edutainment applications - ranging from movies and television, over computer games, to multimedia presentation.

    Before televisions became the norm, projectors were a common sight around middle-class homes. I remember my father used to show us home movies, Disney cartoons, and science documentaries on a compact Super 8mm projector on idle evenings.

    I don't remember the size or even the presence of the "canvas screen" being a big issue. A blank wall did just fine (without any significant loss of picture quality IMHO). If a smaller/larger image was desired, the projector was just moved nearer/away from the wall as necessary. Not such a big deal. Ofcourse the room had to be pitch dark because of the low contrast produced by the projector.

    IMHO, this is a solution looking for a problem. I agree the ability to project on curved surfaces might be a bonus, but the pictures did not reveal any significant advantage.

    I was more impressed by the "light insensitive" projector that was on /. a few weeks back - it could display images/video effectively in bright light - can't find the link.

    • Re:Solution looking for a problem? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by hcdejong ( 561314 ) <`hobbes' `at' `xmsnet.nl'> on Wednesday August 11, 2004 @09:02AM (#9939045)
      Lots of people don't have blank walls. Colored wallpaper, non-smooth plastered walls, walls covered with paintings etc. are all unusable with a normal projector.
      • And what about projecting onto moving surfaces... Waving flag anybody

        or how about ads on a moving subway car.

        and what is setup time like, does it take an hour to calibrate the camera.
      • Lots of people don't have blank walls. Colored wallpaper, non-smooth plastered walls, walls covered with paintings etc. are all unusable with a normal projector.

        Which is why we have Exhibit B: The white bedsheet.

        One bedsheet plus one TV plus one Fresnel lens plus one smaller lens = several fun childhood parties with friends. The room had to be pitch black, and we never did solve all of the distortion problems using a two-lens system, though.

      • Re:Solution looking for a problem? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Znork ( 31774 ) on Wednesday August 11, 2004 @11:14AM (#9940292)
        If it's unusable with a normal projector it'll still be unusable with projection technologies like this.

        If it's usable with a normal projector you'll get a better quality image with a projector like this.

        It isnt magic. It can compensate for color shifts that would cause distortion, but you still pay in image quality by losing contrast and color range. For an extreme example, take a black and white striped wall. As you're unlikely to have an entirely unreflective surface on a wall, you could create a compensated picture by strongly increasing illumination on the black parts and decreasing it on the white part. However, the maximum brightness of the image becomes the maximum brightness reflectable by the black parts, which decreases the contrast range. Same thing with any other surface, you'll lose quality, you just wont lose as much, or in such a visually disturbing fashion as you would with an ordinary projector.

        So if you care enough about image quality to bother getting an expensive projector you'd probably want to get a projection screen anyway.

        Still, it would be quite useful when you either dont care that much about the image quality, or in situations where you have to project on a not quite suitable surface and cant use a screen.
    • I don't remember the size or even the presence of the "canvas screen" being a big issue. A blank wall did just fine (without any significant loss of picture quality IMHO).

      I remember that too, but a number of things have changed. The biggest one (to me anyway) is that we've become accustomed to many more pixels, and much less visual noise. Frankly back then the picture was so bad that bumps in the wall were not the biggest resolution problem.

      Second, those projectors threw a lot more lumens than afford

    • It may not be a big deal for home use, but it's huge for commercial purposes, advertising, and so on.

      And if it's mostly software, it'll become a cheap add-in that'll become ubiquitous whether it's really useful or not, like "movie mode" in digital cameras or fancy ringtones in cellphones.
    • This could be awesome on laptops. Replace the monitor with a minaturized projector and display the image on any close by surgace...

      jeff

  • Projecting onto clouds (Score:5, Interesting)

    by otisg ( 92803 ) on Wednesday August 11, 2004 @09:06AM (#9939074) Homepage Journal
    Funny, I was just thinking about projecting video onto clouds the other day. You probably couldn't cut code using clouds as your gigant display unit, but you could probably watch some 'herbal movies' on them...

  • This sort of technology was shown last year.... (Score:5, Informative)

    by N Monkey ( 313423 ) on Wednesday August 11, 2004 @09:06AM (#9939076)
    ... at Siggraph 2003.

    There was one demonstration showing projection onto the inside of a translucent sphere, while in the paper "iLamps: Geometrically Aware and self-configuring projectors" Raskar et al showed a system that could also combine the output of several projectors. It was quite impressive.
    • I was at SIGGRAPH yesterday, and there were a number of exhibits that used these technologies.
      The internal projected sphere you mentioned was in the art gallery exhibit, and you could choose between a number of video/art projects (only one worth watching was a cool animation of plate tectonics).
      A commercial exhibit had setup using like 5 or 6 projectors to produce one *big* panorama animation of a 3d fish tank (or undersea, not sure), and it looked flawless.

  • Not quite curved on a cricket ground.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by burnttoy ( 754394 ) on Wednesday August 11, 2004 @09:13AM (#9939123) Homepage Journal
    At most cricket grounds over here (esp. for internationals like the current Windies tour) sponsor's logos are printed on the pitch (painted on the grass). BUT. The best camera angles for cricket are from a high up camera inthe stands. So the sponsors have to predistort their logos so that it looks good in a long, panoramic, high shot.

    I thought that it was quite clever when I first saw it.

  • One way to do it: (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Janosh ( 777222 ) on Wednesday August 11, 2004 @09:13AM (#9939129) Homepage
    I haven't RTFA (/.'ed) A norwegian company who specialices in exhibition designs use a procedure to project images on walls in smal spaces, or curved surfaces. They build the room or sphere in a 3d program, and maps the wall with the images they will project. Then place the camera where the projector will be placed, and render. Now you have a video you can project that will fit the wall precicely.

  • Useful (Score:5, Funny)

    by oasis3582 ( 698323 ) on Wednesday August 11, 2004 @09:14AM (#9939138)
    So does this mean I can project video onto my girlfriend to make her look like Keira Knightley? :) oh, and don't worry, I'm just kidding about having a girlfriend...

  • Disneyland (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Therlin ( 126989 ) on Wednesday August 11, 2004 @09:17AM (#9939156)
    Disneyland has been playing with something that sounds similar to this.

    If you go here [mouseplanet.com] and scroll down halfway to "Sleeping Beauty Castle gets a new look", you can see a couple tests that Disneyland did to "paint" the castle. One painting it gold with a ribbon around it, and another one turning it into a US flag.

    • Also, Disney has been projecting images onto water screens for their Fantasmic show. Doesn't work all that great unless you look at the right one from the spot you are sitting, but it's still kinda cool. I was at Disney World about a week ago and they projected an image to make the castle look like the Fantasia sorceror's hat during a fireworks show, and it looked pretty decent.

  • Half's been done? ... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by unithom ( 544624 )
    The first thing that comes to mind is this product:
    http://www.siliconoptix.com/products/index.shtml [siliconoptix.com]

    I work at a planetarium and we researched this product as a means to project video onto our dome theater. It can do any number of near-realtime distortions to the video, including hemispherical mapping, or you can use included software to create custom mappings (like corners).

    We concluded that this product was perhaps one generation early but looked promising. Hopefully they sold enough of them to stay a

  • Useful for odd projection angles? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ericzundel ( 524648 ) on Wednesday August 11, 2004 @09:22AM (#9939200) Homepage Journal

    In our church, we are having issues mounting a projector in a place that is inconspicuous. Most of the inconspicuous places introduce too much of a keystone effect. That means that we will have to fix a (very expensive) projector to project with a special lens to one and only one screen. It might work fine when there is a large group, but if a smaller group wanted to use it in a more intimate setting, everyone will be sitting up front craning their necks. It would be neat if we could just point the projector at any surface and have it automatically correct for whatever distortion happened to be there.

    • (Amazing. Some has an actual application for this technology and it's modded offtopic.)

      You might want to check the existing digital projectors to see if any have features to suit your needs. If your screen is flat, the mapping to adjust for the projector location is a lot simpler than ajusting for irregular shapes and colours of the surface.

  • "I was a 98 Pound Weakling..." (Score:4, Funny)

    by The Ultimate Fartkno ( 756456 ) on Wednesday August 11, 2004 @09:24AM (#9939217)
    "...until I discovered the Slashdot workout plan! Sure, I still spend 8 hours a day in a dim server room and all my cardio comes from playing Counter Strike, but with this new Slashdot brand portable non-optimal surface video projection system I now have a full-body projection of vintage Arnold Schwarzenegger on me at all times! Okay, so he's a lot taller than me and that puts his weiner in the middle of my chest, but that *still* gets me more chicks than before! Thanks, Slashdot!"

  • Meep meep! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Julian Morrison ( 5575 ) on Wednesday August 11, 2004 @09:31AM (#9939273)
    This is so much looking to be used as a "road runner" practical joke. Leave one of these projecting an "open door" and a "hallway" onto a solid brick wall. For the truly evil, project a "tunnel" complete with "diversion sign" onto the ground beside a road, at a sharp bend...

  • Looks a lot better then I expected (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Wednesday August 11, 2004 @09:45AM (#9939431) Journal
    If the final image in the examples is the real result then wow. Projecting a movie into a corner and getting a normal picture is nothing to be sneezed at.

    Sure it won't replace regular screen in places where there is room for them, cinema, meeting room, entertainment room, but it seems perfect for holding a demonstration and not having to take a screen with you and for information/commercial displays.

    Eeek more commercials. Bad germans.

  • Lamping still a problem (Score:3, Interesting)

    by swb ( 14022 ) on Wednesday August 11, 2004 @10:11AM (#9939691)
    I own an LCD RPTV (Sony GW III), and IMHO lamping is still a big problem for projectors, even rear projection systems.

    My TV is pretty good in ambient light, but not great -- I still find myself closing the drapes closest to the TV for daytime watching. You can always jack up the lumens with brighter lights, but this leads to heat problems and lamp replacement costs. I'm already scared for the replacement bulb price for my TV, which is only good for 3 years -- supposedly its a couple of hundred dollars.

    Actual projectors are pretty worthless in any real ambient light in my experience; you need semi-darkness as best.

    And it's not just ambient light, it's image quality. Projection systems usually have pretty crappy black levels. I can live with mine since I'm not that much of an image zealot (no ISF calibration, etc). But you also have uniformity issues, focus, etc.

    • "Lamping"? Is there no noun that is safe from being verbed?

  • Summary of My Method (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The way I project video on a curved surface is to point the projector at the curved surface.
  • I am looking forward to holographic projectors being available. You don't need a screen, you can see 3-D, and combined with the idea of a "touch-projection" technology (think "touch-screen"), we would be onto something like a Holodeck. Doom9 would be extremely cool.
  • I have been dreaming of a VR headset that contains a curved screen. If such a technology could be made small enough could be the enabler for turning these virtually not reality headsets to real VR headsets.

    mmmmm....
  • Did anyone else notice the color correction that was going on in those pictures as well? It shaped the color redistribution so the movie looked normal on a checkerboard curtain... not to mention accounting for the irregular shape of the surface. The combination of those two features is amazing. You have always been able to keystone, but if you have, say, a painting on the wall and don't want to take it down every time you watch a movie...
  • Can they create a display that shows a distorted image such that someone with 20/20 vision and no astigmatism would see it blurry but someone with 20/400 and an astigmatism would see it perfectly?
  • Those people that thought they just upgraded to the best of the best... of the best ... for Doom 3 ,

    will be very very very disillusioned now ;)

  • OK, I think this is cool. But I have a pet peeve with people calling something like this "a technology." Isn't it really just an application of technology? Or a technique, or a method, or a system? Calling something a technology has become a cliche that immediately connotes--for me anyway--something that its overhyped. Like "an historical event" or "a software engineer." It's press release hyperbole.

    Or am I just jaded?

    This technique is a refinement of other systems that project on curved surfaces [skyskan.com]

  • Back to the future. (Score:3, Funny)

    by YouHaveSnail ( 202852 ) on Wednesday August 11, 2004 @12:06PM (#9940808)
    Funny... until flat screen televisions came out, 99.99% of all video was "projected" onto curved surfaces.
    • Funny... until flat screen televisions came out, 99.99% of all video was "projected" onto curved surfaces.

      maybe the headline was misleading for people who don't RTFA.
      it's about projecting on irregular surfaces with irregular coloring, without expensive technology.

    • If the calibration is in real-time then could it possibly work on a liquid like milk or colored/dyed water? I'm even more interested in how they make those holographic images on that site! Projecting onto a corner is interesting but you would have to be directing under the beam from the projector to get the right effect.
  • Me and friend has been playing with the idea to project a car racing game onto the wall in a narrow room or a hallway. With some simple algebra you could calibrate the sidewall and corners so that the scenery on the left and the right of the car is projected on the side walls and the road on the wall in front of you. Such scenary will not requiry much resolution since you will not look at it directly, but it will definitely add to your perception. That should quite a simple add-on to existing games since yo

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