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Comment by fingerlocks | Hacker News Reader

Imagine a matrix of tightly-packed pixel sized micro-cameras opposite of a similarly sized LED screen. You could project the camera image on the screen and make the entire object appear roughly invisible.

If we had a full body suit made of tiny cameras behind translucent LEDs, could we have invisibility/cloaking suits? Is this remotely feasible with current technology? Serious question.

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For invisibility to work like that for more than one viewing angle you would need to add the initial number of pixels for each angle you want to support. So it’s unlikely to work even at small sizes. So 10 angles, you’d need 10x the original number of pixels.

With facial detection and one observer, we could orient our projection as the viewing angle changes. It wouldn’t be true invisibility, but maybe at best a Predator-style fuzzy cloak?

This works for very narrow FOVs, though.

E.g. a stealth aircraft can absorb the radar signal, analyze its direction (using a phased antenna array) and send back a "reflection from earth" with a proper delay. This renders the aircraft effectively invisible to the radar, provided that the covering of the aircraft indeed does not reflect much back.

And even if we somehow made the physics work for the actual displays, I can't even fathom how much computing power you'd need to push all those pixels around to make it look realistic.

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