There are some good examples of real-world installations of those madly-spinning LED light wand thingies, and when I come across them, I write about them. But I have also seen so many crappy demos, like this one off in a corner at this week’s sensory-overloading LDI show in Las Vegas.
The companies who market this tech have touted virtual presence avatars as a use-case, and this one had an oversized avatar of tech billionaire/TV star Mark Cuban talking about something or other to the people passing by.
The photo looks particularly crappy because of how cameras interact with these things, but the real-life visual experience – just looking at it – is not a whole bunch better. It was a darkened hall – the way LDI does things because of all the lighting tech – and the visuals still looked vague.
And you can see all the metalwork in behind that keeps all those madly-spinning rotors in place, and runs the power and signal.
Again, I do think there are some good use-cases for this tech, but with life-sized LCDs out there – at full brightness and in 4K – this ain’t it. And I don’t care that the featured person appears out of thin air.
All that noted, the ultimate in eye candy – the new MSG Sphere in Las Vegas – has something like this in its lobby. But it’s not an avatar.