Rear Projection onto Canopy?

[BHawthorne]

The other day I was looking at my cockpit and light bulb moment occurred. What keeps fighter simpits from covering their canopy and front windscreen with some sort of pliable screen material and rear projecting onto it? 1 projector for the front windscreen and 1 projector for the right and 1 for the left main canopy sides? Has anyone through about this from a practical use point of view? It would definitely be easier to get full canopy projection coverage like this. Would it be a problem with camera views or pre-warping? Even without pre-warping couldn't we get 3 pretty good custom camera windows to pull this type of thing off? IMHO, this sure looks a lot more immersive than other options and could cover much more FOV. Maybe sync it up with trackir head tracking to keep the perspective correct on all 3 projectors in relation to the pilot? If not projecting onto the canopy itself, how about a screen box around the canopy to project onto? This sort of screen design flies in the face of all the screen designs I've seen so far, but is it implausible?

[Mike.Powell]

Projecting directly on the canopy forms the image very close to the eye point, perhaps too close for comfortable viewing. Using a rear-projected screen surround a few feet from the canopy is a commercial approach used in fighter sims. (See the Glass Mountain Optics lit here: http://www.glassmountainoptics.com/Portals/59/Brochures/WASP.pdf ) Creating an immersive environment by totally surrounding the view point by rear-projected images, including the floor(!) is the basis of the "Cave" approach to virtual reality. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_Automatic_Virtual_Environment

[Steve A]

Have you checked out this guy on youtube. Jdome. This is with a single projector http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-IvzpFE7nc

[jaraynor]

How cool is that, Just the price is off putting, But imagine the Military use :D


Imagine the first to use it for FS????