Joystiq impressions: HP's Panoply and Pluribus
At HP's recent gaming media event, the company talked about its acquisition of VoodooPC and how HP fits into the console-heavy world of gaming. Specifically, HP seems to be positioning itself as a technology development company that will license its crazy inventions to the console companies. Mscape, an augmented-reality system is the most ambitious step in that direction, but two video projector concepts -- Panoply and Pluribus -- could also be ripe for the console space.
Both technologies assemble multiple, off-the-shelf projectors into a Voltron of a screen; Panoply combines several images on a curved, concave surface, while Pluribus combines and overlaps its projectors for big, bright images.
Panoply is currently in use in the room-sized Halo videoconferencing installations. At the press event, HP showed Panoply with two projectors on a concave arc. The two images stitched perfectly together to show a panoramic view of a racing game and an FPS.
HP sees Panoply being used in smaller scale applications, roughly with four projectors at most, while Pluribus scales far higher; a cluster of 12 projectors showed a wall-sized an Xbox 360 game of FIFA Soccer. Pluribus blasts its images on a flat surface, but its appeal is in both high resolutions -- by stitching adjacent images together -- and bright, detailed visuals by layering projections. The demo showed the 360 running at 720p, but the maximum resolution scales with the number of projectors.
In the demonstration, I walked in front of some of the projectors; the obstructed area grew dimmer, but since I didn't block all of them, the projectors continued to show the full screen image. And in the modestly lit -- although far from dark -- room, the layered images were noticeably brighter and clearer than a single projector. HP's engineers anticipate that if the technology reaches consumers, friends and neighbors with different projectors -- different brands and specs -- could come together to create a single, superior image.
HP didn't offer more specific thoughts on when Pluribus and Panoply might reach consumers, if at all; the event highlighted technology in development and left us to guess about "how much?" and other real-world details. Panoply looked good; it could be applied to arcade game designs, but seems less likely to reach general consumers. Pluribus, while still niche, would be welcome at our future BYO-projector Halo game nights.
