Overview
The McFly's window Scenery Channel 'scene screen' from Back to the Future Part II could become a reality — and not just as a projector screen. Google's just landed the patent for technology that turns your walls into projection screens, so you could be able to fake the weather outside in your kitchen, make your lounge room into King's Landing, or make a Yayoi Kusama installation of your bedroom. Sure, it sounds like your regular ol' projector set-up or even Google's own existing Chromecast technology, but the difference lies in Google's super high-res photoreactive paint.
According to Quartz, Google landed a patent today from the US Patent and Trademark Office, one that turn-around-touch-the-ground bagses the technology behind a projection system that uses photoreactive paint to display chosen images on a wall. Sure, it sounds like your regular ol' projector set-up or even Google's own existing Chromecast technology, but the difference lies in Google's super high-res photoreactive paint.
So how does it work? After choosing a 'theme' (similar to choosing for your phone/tablet/computer), the projector shoots a laser at the painted wall, which in turn changes from its current boring old wall colour to an image not dissimilar from a desktop wallpaper. Controlled by a smartphone or computer, the projected image would stay put on the wall until changed or switched off. Suggested themes from the Google patent include either mimicking or rejecting the weather outside (we're talking full-on sunshine and palm trees for today), holiday themes (imagine how quickly you could put up Christmas decorations), or scoreboards when it's finals season. Apparently Google's hoping to take their proposed technology from still images to videos — now we're getting to full McFly window status here.
Google's photoreactive paint projection technology is not on the market right now, they've just secured the patent. Google told Quartz not to treat this as a product announcement though, saying “We hold patents on a variety of ideas—some of those ideas later mature into real products or services, some don’t. Prospective product announcements should not necessarily be inferred from our patents.”
Eh. We can dream.
Via Quartz.