3D Coke Sign in Times Square [video] | Hacker News Reader

3D Coke Sign in Times Square [video]

vimeo.com

87 pointsxvirk34 comments

Something similar - the sand pit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki8UXSJmrJE

Also, I can't find it now, but there was a car demo that was similar - it was vertical, and the car drove through a show floor. Can someone find that one?

Same sand pit with water and lava:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8p7YVqyudiE

I'm always impressed on how high quality these screens are. Despite the fact that they are on 24/7 and run under extreme condition, snow New York, and excruciating heat in vegas.

You really have to see them up close in person to appreciate it, then realize you are watching a commercial.

Aside from the mechanical pieces on this one, the signs are mostly LEDS and shift registers. Good LEDs with good heat sinking and rugged 5vdc power supplies are really all that's needed for a good sign. Plus keeping water out.

The modules themselves are fairly commoditized at this point. As long as you buy ones with name brand LEDs (Cree, etc), they are very resilient.

Signs you see that have issues are usually just the cheap modules with generic LEDs.

> then realize you are watching a commercial

Regardless of its impressiveness, at the end of the day it's just an ad trying to sell you stuff

As neat as the underlying tech is, the end result here is, to my eye, essentially the same as default wipes/transitions from #homeMovieEditingSoftware#, rendering all that effort fairly pointless.

Mind you, it's Time Square, so gimmicks got to gimmick!

Very very cool!

Also very very pixelated appearence because the sharp edges to each unit.

/me mulls patenting the same kind of thing but by stitching together small cheap flexible LCD screens brought in bulk from Alibaba...

The pixelation is a result of viewing it a distance closer than the distance at which the image was designed to be viewed. At a microscopic level, a fine art photograph will show grain, an inkjet print will show ink dots, and a computer monitor will appear as individual pixels.

The video is shot in close and tangentially in order to show how it works.

By "pixelated appearence" I mean the blockiness caused by seeing the black sides of each block when its a different height. The display is a bit like a minecraft map with the colouring only on one face of each cube.

I think eliminating the black sides would actually make the 3D effect far less visible.

I agree. The opening scene of the video and the shot at around 0:38 depict the typical angles and viewing distance from which most people will experience the sign. From these view points, the individual pixels are not readily apparent. But a two video from typical angles and distances would not be very interesting compared to close ups that show the mechanism in action and showing the mechanism is probably more suitable for a sales/marketing video.

Very cool, I'll still be avoiding Time Square at all times though

"Please pay attention to us, we'll try anything"

It's pretty sad that such an aesthetic piece of technology is completely ruined by that companys content.

the pursuit of aesthetics has always been bankrolled by commercial dick measuring contests of one form or another. the fact that we can convince our corporate overlords to continue financing unnecessary objects is one of the few things that keeps me hopeful for the future.

Nice viewpoint, but still - why couldn't they engage some artists to do some really beautiful stuff with this setup instead of nonstop-plastering their default imagery onto it.

It's a missed opportunity to show off even bigger dick in that regard.

This is a cool effect but it looks like it's mechanical: the screen is split into tiny squares which can slide in and out independently. It's not 3D, it's literally tiny screens moving along the z-axis.

The technology behind this is probably quite interesting as the movement has to sync up with the video but I can't watch this without wondering how long it will take for some of the tiny screens to get stuck because of a failed actuator.

It's more of a clever hack of 2D technology than an actual advancement in 3D technology like the title might lead someone to believe.

Here's a post with better detail, videos of testing the system, etc. It's pretty much what you described. https://hackaday.com/2017/09/02/coca-colas-new-3d-times-squa...

I'd propose replacing the original link with this one, since there's information about how this display was put together, in addition to a link to the posted video.

> This is a cool effect but it looks like it's mechanical

Well, yes, it is mechanical. While I agree with you that this isn't what you would normally class as '3D' it still has a z-axis component; so perhaps it qualifies for 2.5D?

Nonetheless, I haven't seen mainstream advertising done like this before and the applications of this (more creative visual / mechanical syncs) are really exciting.

It is fun to watch, but its really just the uniqueness that makes it special. I personally dont see this getting wide spread use.

It's just like any other tech demo. The uniqueness factor is all its got going for it now... but to take the next step this technique must inspire someone to use it and create additional value beyond the uniqueness.

The next step is now more likely because millions of people will see what is possible and be inspired to create.

Similar to what is going on with VR Gaming headsets like Oculus right now.

It's literally real 3D. Do you think only pseudo-3D-in-2D is real 3D, while actual real 3D is just a 2D hack? It's ridiculous.

If one dimension is limited compared to others, it makes sense to call it psudeo 3d, because all planes are not fully realized. But it is still clearly invoking a 3rd dimension, maybe a 4th if you consider movement in time.

I still call it just shy of '3D'.

My car is 3D but it's only ever car-shaped.

Yes, but can it be segmented in open regions which are homeo/diffeomorphic to subsets of the R²?

(Canonical example: the Earth is a three-dimensional object, but looks 2D locally (at a neighborhood of any given point).

Offtopic, but why is 'pseudo' almost always misspelled even on HN?

Because in English the way it's spelled seems entirely orthogonal to its pronunciation.

"pseudo" basically sounds like "sudo".

Compare to German where the way it's spelled is exactly how you'd spell it if you first heard it (and speak German). We don't drop the "p" and we pronounce "eu" as a diphthong as in other Germans words (sounding like "oi" in English).

As a German this is why I almost never misspell it in English. It looks the same as in German and is a loanword in both languages, so I tend to sound it out the German way even when thinking in English.

It's a very neat effect, but I think his point was that it's not 3D rendering, so from that aspect it's not particularly interesting.

It's sort of like going to a play and then saying you just watched a 3D movie.

Whole discussion reminds me of the "3d burrito" spoof:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnR98JjRrII

It's interesting, but it's like putting a TV on a robot arm and then saying it's a 3D display. The only difference is it uses multiple displays and limits the movement to a single axis.

Technically it's a 2D surface extruded in real 3D space.

Early 3D games didn't have polygonal models and the levels were actually defined by a 2D grid (making it impossible to climb "on top" of something as each square could only be blocking or passable but had no "height"). Objects in the game world were drawn as 2D sprites on that 2D plane but it was all rendered in perspective to give the illusion of 3D.

Nowadays we call those games "2.5D" to distinguish them from modern 3D games which can render arbitrary polygonal objects.

This display is 2.5D. It basically "renders" a rectangular 2D texture with a low-resolution depth map by painting the texture on the screens and then extruding the screens according to the depth.

Something always fails. Was curious about the details, though. Actuators from the linked Patent:

  - F12-BC (W-Robit, Taiwan)
  - PAC-UGT040D (PBC Linear, Roscoe, Ill.)

Motors and servos:

  - BCH U04 (Schneider Electric, Palatine, Ill.)
  - LXM23A servo system (Schneider)
  - Modicon M256 Logic controller (Schneider)
  - SM23165DT (Moog Animatics, Santa Clara, Calif.)

That last motor is a NEMA 23 stepper and commonly used in 3D printers. I remember tweaking the current levels on it with a temperature gun until it was just at 40 C. These particular ones are rated for 85 C and have a high mean time between failure - over 20k hours of continuous operation. At lower (more normal) operation temperatures they can last 10-20 years.

Of course, there are always exceptions and lots can go wrong (that random failure, bird gets trapped in the mechanism?), but looks like they picked decent components.

To increase the 3D resolution, all they have to do is make the pixels smaller (1 screen = 1 pixel).

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