Obscura CueLight Pool Table

via Gizmodo

If you like being distracted by projections and badass animations while you play pool, the Obscura CueLight is for you. It uses sensors and an overhead projector to create images that follow the balls as they bang around the table.

The system itself will set you back $80,000, no pool table included. At the Esquire Ultimate Bachelor Pad, where it's currently set up, it's projecting on a $125,000 pool table. Bottom line: you can't afford it.

In addition to this setup, where the balls reveal an image hidden underneath, you can also set it up to have flames track behind the balls, or water that ripples as the balls pass over it. It's a pretty awesome trick, one that works surprisingly smoothly.

They're working on new software that will make it more useful than flashy, too. Imagine playing pool and having the lines where you should shoot projected down on the table, with a computer doing all the math necessary to show you just where to aim and how hard to hit. Pretty sweet.

No, This Dancing Building's Bricks Are Not Falling Like Tetris

via�Gizmodo�by Brian Lam on 4/24/09

This isn't an animation, and it's not CGI and it's not a building doing the humpty dance. It's actually the old mint in downtown SF being painted by 7 perfectly mapped HD projectors.

Obscura Digital, the company behind the light show at Youtube's Symphony last week, has has used their propriety software to control a giant HD light show spread across multiple HD projectors for a Mcafee ad. Never mind the marketing purpose, this is one of the coolest things I've ever seen. I think of it as using 3d graphics gear to make the real world look like video games, instead of using 3d graphics gear to make games appear realistic.

To get the image to look seamless, the software calculates distance and angle and surface shape of the building, compensating for brightness, picture shift, and other variables. This sort of thing would normally take months to plan, but they set up this example in a matter of days, due to the flexibility of the software. Here are examples of their other work, including the iGoogle launch in NYC (which used almost 20 projectors) and the youtube symphony. [Obscura�via�Fast Company]