New Tank (Invisible) ala James Bond

[fareway]

This isn't new, saw some japanese do it with a guy in a raincoat standing on a street somewhere years ago on TV, same thing with a camera and projector

[emil_t]

i've heard that that japanese guy with the rain coat used fiber optics in the coat to get the light from behind and round the person and then back in front

[toma_alimosh]

Originally Posted by emil_t

i've heard that that japanese guy with the rain coat used fiber optics in the coat to get the light from behind and round the person and then back in front

Oh come on you guys, if you're talking about the same Japanese guy that fox news posted on their website about, then it's BS. he's clearly using Chroma Key. Anyone can do that with a green coat or green-colored objects (some will work better than others) and video editing from a program that can do chroma key.

And that's exactly why I think this might be fake, or at least that there's a big idiot working for fox news .

EDIT: some of you might know it as "the green screen technique" that has been used in movie and television production for ages.

[emil_t]

the green screen techique that you are talking about is really plausible, but that's what i've heard.

[matt2000]

i can still imagine the tank turning bright blue while out on the battlefield with 'A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer' in huge letters down the side... which prompts me to go off topic for a quick roflmao:

[toma_alimosh]

^try looking at the youtube video link posted on fox news ... at the first scene you see the guy moving a ball or brick in front of his face ... but if the ball or brick is invisible, then it should show his face .. but it doesn't. Because all it does is (digitally) project an image of the background (which had been filmed earlier, when the guys wasn't in the shot) on the parts of the video that are the same color as the ball.

So what you're really seeing is a guy moving a uniformly-coloured ball or brick in front of his face. Which has been (poorly if I may say so) video-edited to reject the color of the ball/brick and replace it with part of another image.

[chaos386]

Originally Posted by toma_alimosh

^try looking at the youtube video link posted on fox news ... at the first scene you see the guy moving a ball or brick in front of his face ... but if the ball or brick is invisible, then it should show his face .. but it doesn't. Because all it does is (digitally) project an image of the background (which had been filmed earlier, when the guys wasn't in the shot) on the parts of the video that are the same color as the ball.

So what you're really seeing is a guy moving a uniformly-coloured ball or brick in front of his face. Which has been (poorly if I may say so) video-edited to reject the color of the ball/brick and replace it with part of another image.

What about the other video where you see the truck in motion behind the guy in the coat?

[Twerp128]

And I always hated that James Bond because the unrealistic invisible Aston. Hmm, movie still sucked.

[toma_alimosh]

Originally Posted by chaos386

What about the other video where you see the truck in motion behind the guy in the coat?

If you're talking about the video with the same guy outside, he's not actually sitting outside. He recorded a video of outside and he's using it as a background. He's actually inside in front of a screen that is the same colour as the coat he's wearing. So not only is he replacing the image on the coat, he's replacing the image in the background as well. The interior of the coat, however is a different color, thus you can see the insides of his "invisible cape". If you've ever seen the weather on the news, they do the exact same thing when the weatherman (or woman) is in front of the background image of the map and weather symbols for sunny, clouds, rain .. etc. That's not a gigantic screen right behind them, it's usually a green wall ... though some use blue as the chroma key, green is the most common because no serious weatherman will wear bright green clothes, but they might wear a blue tie.

And notice, when they go to point at something, most of them don't look directly into the camera at the moment, nor do they look at the wall behind them. They're looking into a monitor right next to the camera where they can see the background image already edited in (on-the-fly) and that's how they coordinate the movement of their hands to the picture that's supposed to be in the background. Some have the images projected right on the front of the camera lens (in the same way they do the captions that news presenters read from), and don't have to look away. But the camera's opening is quite small and thus pointing at things may not be very accurate, depending on the zoom into the background.

[vanMould]

Originally Posted by SiR_dude

It would be better if you could design an optical coating that would transmit light around the object and back at the viewer. Then you could just coat the entire vehicle with said coating.

Infrared paint!

I've always wondered what an infrared object would look like...

[SiR_dude]

Originally Posted by vanMould

Infrared paint!

I've always wondered what an infrared object would look like...

The only way that would work is if said paint reflected ONLY infrared wavelengths, and absorbed everything else. Unfortunately, I do not think this exists.

[chaos386]

Originally Posted by toma_alimosh

If you're talking about the video with the same guy outside, he's not actually sitting outside. He recorded a video of outside and he's using it as a background. He's actually inside in front of a screen that is the same colour as the coat he's wearing. So not only is he replacing the image on the coat, he's replacing the image in the background as well. The interior of the coat, however is a different color, thus you can see the insides of his "invisible cape". If you've ever seen the weather on the news, they do the exact same thing when the weatherman (or woman) is in front of the background image of the map and weather symbols for sunny, clouds, rain .. etc. That's not a gigantic screen right behind them, it's usually a green wall ... though some use blue as the chroma key, green is the most common because no serious weatherman will wear bright green clothes, but they might wear a blue tie.

And this?

+ YouTube Video

Here's a portion of the video I was talking about, btw:

+ YouTube Video

Notice how in both cases, the video being projected onto the cloak lags a little behind what's actually going on behind him. I suppose if this was some elaborate hoax, he could have used two different chroma keys simultaneously, so that the image "projected" onto his cloak is different from the background (and staged a fake nextfest demonstration, complete with fake reports about it in the news), but that's starting to get more complicated than just using a projector on a cloak made of retroreflective material, which is all this was supposed to be in the first place.

[toma_alimosh]

Originally Posted by chaos386

And this?



Here's a portion of the video I was talking about, btw:



Notice how in both cases, the video being projected onto the cloak lags a little behind what's actually going on behind him. I suppose if this was some elaborate hoax, he could have used two different chroma keys simultaneously, so that the image "projected" onto his cloak is different from the background (and staged a fake nextfest demonstration, complete with fake reports about it in the news), but that's starting to get more complicated than just using a projector on a cloak made of retroreflective material, which is all this was supposed to be in the first place.

Ah, that's interesting. Didn't know about that project at the University of Tokyo. So the videos are authentic. On the other hand, it's an even more stupid than the chroma key idea. But it's definitely no invisible cloak ... it's a reflective cloak, basicaly a guy dressed in a movie theater screen. Light is projected on the cloak and reflected back to the eyes of the spectator.
Here's a link to how that works: http://science.howstuffworks.com/invisibility-cloak.htm

So the only way that would work is if the person that wasn't supposed to see you stays in one place all the time AND looks through a specially-made "combiner" mirror. This is by far the poorest attempt at invisibility I've ever seen. It's only good for movie production. In which case, chroma key would yield better results.

Basically, the same formula applies:
make a video of the background, project it on a special surface. Therefore, it's the same reason that you can't see the guy's face when his hands are in front of his face ... because it's showing you a video recording of the background, that was recorded earlier, when the guy wasn't in the picture. The video is lagging just a bit on the first one because they had time to synchronise it with the video on the screen. At least approximately. The video is lagging very much in the second video because they're basically recording it live and the computer they're recording on is obviously too slow to render it in real time. And the guy has a video camera behind him in that second video for that to work, so yeah ...


Thus, the technology is useless. And it's definitely NOT the technology that they're talking about implementing on tanks Do that on the battlefield and the only thing that's going to be in your advantage is if the sun is right behind them and they're blinded by the light reflected off of the retro-reflective material.

I'd rather stick with fatigues, thank you very much.

EDIT: Oh and that's a poor excuse for a university study experiment. I'd take Susumu Tachi, Masahiko Inami and Naoki Kawakami's funding away from them. Wasting the university's money on making a movie-screen jacket ...
University professors, what can I say ...

[zenkidori]

Originally Posted by toma_alimosh

^try looking at the youtube video link posted on fox news ... at the first scene you see the guy moving a ball or brick in front of his face ... but if the ball or brick is invisible, then it should show his face .. but it doesn't. Because all it does is (digitally) project an image of the background (which had been filmed earlier, when the guys wasn't in the shot) on the parts of the video that are the same color as the ball.

So what you're really seeing is a guy moving a uniformly-coloured ball or brick in front of his face. Which has been (poorly if I may say so) video-edited to reject the color of the ball/brick and replace it with part of another image.

you are SORTA right. the image is actually being projected onto his coat, not digitally added on a screen. you can see the effect with your naked eye, from a certain viewpoint.

a camera views the background, and then projects that image onto his suit, which is coated with retroreflectors. from the angle of the projector you can see the background on the suit.

[No Boss]

You heard it here first, folks. toma_alimosh our resident expert on invisibility.

[toma_alimosh]

^Haha, best topic ever



Do I get a cookie?

[zenkidori]

Originally Posted by toma_alimosh

^Haha, best topic ever



Do I get a cookie?

an invisible one

[chaos386]

Originally Posted by zenkidori

an invisible one

Except it's not really invisible, just covered in green paint.

...lead paint, unfortunately.