All you'd need is a blank white surface like a wall or ceiling. Just set it up, plug it in, insert your game disc and play.
-- jaksplat, Dec 13 2004

For a 3D effect. Flapping_20Sheet_20Hologram
[2 fries shy of a happy meal, Dec 15 2004]

LG Projector and smart phone http://www.youtube....watch?v=JRuYv_2NmRA
getting kind of baked [jaksplat, Dec 15 2009]

Not a bad idea, per se. It would have to be an extremely high quality projector - - like a $15,000 BARCO projector - - to be worth using with any of the systems that come out.
-- contracts, Dec 13 2004


Projected games = fun. You would need a designated room that you could darken if you wanted to play during the day. Total darkness would be best, but then you would also need a little lamp to see where you left your coffee cup or which game you were going to select next. The practicality of all this however would be very expensive as contracts suggests depending on your lumens versus heat versus children sitting too close and - ping! there goes the bulb.
-- benfrost, Dec 13 2004


Projectors are still in their infancy. For around ten years now they have been doubling their brightness and resolution and halving their cost every year (well, maybe an exaggeration, but not by much). Soon their time will come and they will hit the domestic market with a vengeance.

PS I have played Road Rash on a $15,000 Barco, so I can bun this with some authority.
-- wagster, Dec 13 2004


me and a couple long days playing GTA3 on the office projector have something for you... it's a bun!
-- photojunkie, Dec 13 2004


One of the services that my company provides is the construction of ridiculously expensive Naval Conning Officer Virtual Environments (massive videogames for the U.S. Navy.) We just did one that had 12 (!!) Barcos for a 365 degree screen. Abso-effing-amazing, it is.

Another benefit of this idea that I hadn't thought about until just now was that you could take it anywhere that had voltage and play. As long as you could turn the lights off, you wouldn't need anything but the system.
-- contracts, Dec 14 2004


I think it's kind of easy to hack up a cheap projector, but why waste the parts when you can more easily have a VR headset instead?
-- mr2560, Dec 14 2004


Join the Navy! We don't just take our simulations to the next degree...we take them an extra five!
I've seen a similar setup for training air traffic controllers. I agree with the abso-effing-amazing comment.

I think projectors are still way too expensive and hot to include as a built-in to a game system, but I like the idea. [+]
-- Freefall, Dec 14 2004


hahahah! Crap. Uhm . . . I was talking about uh, overlapping . . . yeah. ;-) I do all the contractual stuff, not the design or construction - - if they did rely on me for geometry or simple algebra . . . well, I'd have been fired long ago.

I think this idea would work without regard to the heat. The profiles on console systems are getting smaller and smaller, which indicates to me that heat can't be too much of a problem.
-- contracts, Dec 14 2004


The only reason I can see for designing games with a built-in projector would be to provide for environments that were larger than a conventional system could produce. Something like a trap-shooting game, for example, merely has to move one or two "targets" around a very large wall area and could thus benefit from including a built-in "projector" [such things exist, btw]. But for most purposes, the projector would either have to be of such poor quality that the user would be better off with an ordinary TV set, or of such high cost that a user would be better off buying the game and a standalone projector (if he could afford one) or using a TV (if he couldn't).
-- supercat, Dec 15 2004


<whirrrrrrrrruuuuup - rewind to 1985> "I know that we can make hi-res miniature LCD screens, but there's really no point in integrating them into a games console. They're really expensive and who wants to play computer games while walking around? Besides, you'd get better quality from a conventional tv set." <prrrreeeeeeaaaaawww - forward to 2004> "Check out my Game-Boy Advance - I can play head-to-head against the kid in the car behind, on the motorway, over wireless!>
-- wagster, Dec 15 2004


Projectors aren't as expensive as they used to be, I know of several that cost less than $1500. The bulbs are expensive, though, so you want to make sure to give them adequete ventalation so that the bulb (and the projector itself, of course) will last you a long time.
-- Dickcheney6, Nov 11 2008



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