I got back from my night time tests with the new sign on the front of the building a little while ago. Everyone was pretty down at first because while it was still light out they looked pretty horrible, the design treatments we tried didn’t mitigate the problem at all. I’m not even going to show you those videos it was splotchy and gross with giant hot spots in the middle. So we waited until it was dark and the sign filled out better. There were still hot spots but you could at least see the edges of the sign. I’m sure we can make a design that looks pretty and mysterious although since only very large type shows up it couldn’t have very much information on it.

The tips for any one else designing a big rear projection sign is to use a black background. Here is a movie with a dark background as compared to one with a white background

There were two good things that happened right at the end of the night. We were told the interior passageway would be darker than it was in these tests but we can’t turn them off yet because the electricians are still working. Also we tested the sign using a rear projection film taped up to the inside of the frosted glass. Even that rough test produces a sharper more even image. The contractors installing the projectors think they can get their hands on a film that will let a lot of light through during the day but diffuse our projection enough to see an image.

Well we are off to an inauspicious start with the signage project for the front of the new building. It seems that the sign is not showing up very well during the day time. This is partly due to the nature of projecting a sign onto frosted glass during the daylight and partly due to the fact that the glass in the windows is not optical frosted glass it is instead plain old acid etched frosted glass. The thing about optical frosted glass (like regular projection screens) is that is has some little reflective particles that help spread the light out evenly. When you don’t have that you tend to get big bright spots in the middle of your video where the projector is. You can take a look at this video to see what it looks like on a sunny day. If your having trouble seeing the image focus on the frosted glass three quarters over on the right side. Unfortunately the video should be playing on the entire frosted glass surface that you can see in this shot.

So thats is bad news. We are meeting tomorrow to discuss options and ideas to fix it. After that meeting we finally get to see the projection at night and i am mostly confident that it will look good when it is darker outside.

I remember Marek had something like this happen with the projectors in the table thats why there is a special coating on the back of the glass. Maybe he would have some ideas also. Conviently he is in town installing the Dialog Table for a few days.