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Cloud Movie Projector

Adjusts the changing cloud shape to create a flat looking screen image.
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Using laser projectors, a movie image would be projected on a cloud hundreds, even thousands of feet overhead and would morph and change as necessary to provide a flat image on a lumpy, undulating cloud from a particular angle, say where a large city is.

The shape tracking would be done by checking the relationship of various bits of the picture and adjusting for if they drift apart or come together too much.

You could tell folks where to go in the interwebnet to hear the soundtrack.

To be clear, things have been projected on clouds since Batman first did his bat thing, but this is to adjust the image being projected onto the morphing, uneven projection screen of a cloud so that it looks flat.

doctorremulac3, Dec 10 2021

Good thinking, Batman. https://en.wikipedi...ignal_1989_film.jpg
It's a start... [whatrock, Dec 10 2021]

(?) Rafael Lozano-Hemmer projection mapping https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pKrVkW8Psp0
second sun [xenzag, Dec 11 2021]

Wow! https://www.youtube...watch?v=jtFthRSqRwQ
Check this out. [doctorremulac3, Dec 12 2021]

So this is what I was picturing but with clouds with the uneven surface adjustment thing. https://www.youtube...watch?v=a1v4W95wJnM
[doctorremulac3, Dec 12 2021]

[link]






       Thank you a1.
doctorremulac3, Dec 10 2021
  

       Tell me honestly, does this projection make my cloud look flat to you?   

       0) Screw the FAA, this is art.   

       1) You’d need more than one color for sure.   

       2) I think you could make a test computer mock-up fairly easily with basic off the shelf 3D modeling programs. Take a 3D cloud model and put a bitmap (I think they call it) overlay and see how much you need to adjust it. Start with a simple ball that would distort the picture so it looked like a fisheye lens, counter the distortion then apply the same process with the more complex shapes of a cloud.
doctorremulac3, Dec 10 2021
  

       // Screw the FAA, this is art.//   

         

       [marked-for-tagline]   

       OK, once this is working, use it to show the Howard Hughes movie "Hell's Angels", in which a background of clouds was used to give more reality to scenes of aircraft in flight.
pertinax, Dec 11 2021
  

       Image distortion: Seems to me, that if the observer is close to the laser projector, no correction is needed. The light comes straight back. For psyops, of course the projector needs to be somewhere remote from the observer. In that case, in order to have an undistorted image, the cloud can't have a surface so contorted that there are surfaces the observer can see that are not visible to the projector. So that will depend on how far away the projector is.   

       Also, the image will only be "perfect" from one observation point, but even there the image will be somewhat fuzzy depending on the density of the edge of the cloud.
scad mientist, Dec 11 2021
  

       Get cirrus already.   

       You may want to look at the work of artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer who uses projection mapping, along with a variety of other interactive processes in his work. For example; the creation of a second sun floating in the sky over a city. [see link]
xenzag, Dec 11 2021
  

       Ooh, I like that, [xenzag].   

       I wonder where he was projecting the images from; I noticed a dark spot at the top of the "sun": maybe there was some equipment under that.
pertinax, Dec 11 2021
  

       If you do some searches, there are full details of how Lozano-Hemmer makes his work. He's not a magician. He's an artist with a large team of technicians and engineers who help him to realise his ideas.
xenzag, Dec 11 2021
  

       Thank you.
pertinax, Dec 11 2021
  

       As per [scad mientist], there will be a parallax error for anywhere except the "set" viewpoint. Of course, the further away the cloud, the smaller the error; so aim for cirrus (as [2 fries shy of a happy meal] said...).
Maybe multiple linked projectors, to "fill in" gaps?
neutrinos_shadow, Dec 12 2021
  
      
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