Disney has a (poor) version of this idea. They project an animation onto wedding cakes at their resorts. They're pre-rendered though, rather than dynamic like this. It'd be fascinating to see what uses they could come up with for this stuff.
Disney does a lot of projection mapping in the parks right now, but it's all (AFAIK) the traditional, pre-rendered type, with animations projected onto large static surfaces like the Magic Kingdom's castle, or onto animatronics with pre-planned motion paths.
I'm having a little trouble visualizing how this non-rigid projection mapping could get applied in a practical way in the parks today, mostly because it seems like it has a fairly small "active" area (determined by your projector and sensor resolution, essentially). I could imagine this being used in a parade or stage show, for example, but this system seems like it would be pretty restrictive as to where the performers could move and remain in the projection space.
Those projections onto the castle are quite stunning. The technology for producing an enormous, apparently seamless image on that uneven canvas is amazing (even if it's static). And a lot of creativity went into building an animation that used that very specific venue so well.
What if the projection space were mobile? One of the applications is to put projectors on moving objects, and project onto static (or moving) surfaces, assuming the system gets small & portable enough. How about one or more projectors mounted on each car of the Haunted Manison ride, or projectors mounted on flying drones aimed at the Spaceship Earth (the geodesic Epcot globe) during the night light show? Combine multiple projectors and a position tracking system, maybe even viewer head/eye tracking too, and I think there might be some amazing possibilities...
I think you could even go and apply the same algorithms to AR projections though. This would have massive applications in parks. Guests wearing AR projection goggles while touring the park allowing for a hugely immersive experience
I could imagine doing something for the house of terror like projecting ghosts or something like that, in the curtains to a doorway or on sofas/couches after you stand up (and have your shadow follow you while doing creepy things for instance)
Of course, I'm no expert but throw a few million dollars into this and you can probably come up with some neat stuff even if the projection space is small-ish for now.
Disney uses something similar in a lot of their stage shows at their parks. They use a water fountain to create a screen and project onto the water sheet. It works surprisingly well, but I would assume that it is pre-rendered.
The water screens are actually a pretty old technique that you can do with any traditional light projector (flim or digital). The hard part is making the water sheet.
>What do you think the word 'poor' means when referring to quality?
poor (adjective): of a low or inferior standard or quality.
>Might be kinder to say 'less advanced' or 'simpler' or 'earlier'.
Kinder towards what? Is a multinational like Disney sensitive or is the technology sensitive to the choice of words criticising it? Or will the researchers take offense to their technology, which is objectively inferior, being described as "poor"?
We're stretching this too thin, inventing issues where there are none...
First of all, I'm not calling it poor, the grandparent did.
I'm saying it's nothing special to call it poor.
We say 10x harsher things everyday in HN for frameworks, languages, etc. Heck, check any thread about Apple products. Don't real people work on those?
Plus, ever read art criticism, or restaurant criticism, or political critiques even in the most respected newspapers? "Poor" is the least harsh of the terms they use. And those are also real people they level those things at...
The connotative meaning of “poor” isn’t really anything that isn’t the absolute best. Words have meaning beyond the dictionary definition. “Poor” in this case means you think the researchers did a bad job, not that their work was a step on the path to something better. “Earlier”, or even “dated”, would have been a much more charitable depiction. And plenty of people are deriving joy from the application of that technology.
I’m really not. And I don’t get offended by very much. Maybe you’re not a native speaker? “Poor” as it refers to quality is a negative qualifier. And it’s typically used in a subjective context. That’s the connotative meaning.
Even the definition used here (taken from Google) indicates so, if it weren’t truncated:
poor (adjective) worse than is usual, expected, or desirable; of a low or inferior standard or quality.
The list of synonyms is even more telling about it’s real meaning: shoddy, bad, deficient, defective, lamentable, deplorable, awful, etc.
These are not words I’d use to describe the technology, having seen it first-hand. The technology is not worse than usual and I really don’t see how it’s worse than expected or is otherwise undesirable. It’s out there and being enjoyed by people.
