On Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 05:54:40PM -0700, Chuck McManis wrote:
> So what is the ideal visual machine? Opinions?
If you've ever seen the StarFire propaganda video from Sun... that was
impressive. A horizontal desk at the back curves upwards into a tall
backdrop, and the whole thing is a giant seamless display and a scanner too,
and pressure-sensitive. You can scan paper by placing it on the surface and
rubbing with your hand. Well I think the techology to build such a thing
isn't there yet but I can sure relate to this dream... I suppose what
it's waiting for is the ability to integrate VCSE-LED's and CCD elements
together on a large sheet of some kind of semiconductor. Maybe now that
there are printable polymer semiconductors, if a CCD or some other kind
of light-sensor element could be implemented using this kind of semiconductor,
it would be possible.
This "video prototype" as they called it might even be old enough to
be on-topic.
The trouble with jumbotrons is the space between screens. I have thought
of using multiple projectors, and aligning them so the edges just meet
perfectly; you could have a matrix of 6 or 8 of them and have a really
big desktop. But I can't afford even one nice 1280x1024 DLP projector,
let alone 8 of them. :-)
I also want to build a desk to hold some touchscreens at an angle, almost
horizontal but not quite; with convenient armrests for hours of comfortable
use. I am (very slowly) working on a client-server UI system which will
among other things permit the user interface to be distributed across
multiple workstations and screens in a "cluster".
Right now the best I have is 2 21" monitors at 1280x1024 each. Not bad
but could still be improved. I'm using XFree in dual-head mode; I can't
get Xinerama working so far.
--
_______ Shawn T. Rutledge / KB7PWD ecloud_at_bigfoot.com
(_ | |_) http://www.bigfoot.com/~ecloud kb7pwd_at_kb7pwd.ampr.org
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Received on Fri Jul 13 2001 - 20:29:43 BST