Fogscreen tech has been around for, like, ever, but a Russian company has gone and added a slick little super smart camera system to turn a fog screen into a midair multitouch display.

You might think that this is just another Kinect hack, but Kinect is nowhere near smart enough to detect (say) your fingers tapping on a midair keyboard. This display, called Displair, ups the ante a whole heck of a lot by using an infrared camera to detect up to 1,500 touch points with a resolution of only one single centimeter. This is enough for a multitude of multitouch gestures by multiple people on virtual screens anywhere from 40" to 140," all projected on a thin streaming layer of cold fog.

You'll notice in the video below that the resolution of the display appears to decrease vertically; this is likely because the fog begins to dissipate. It's a fairly significant restriction on what you'd be able to realistically use a display like this for, but for short-range, low-res, mid-air awesomeness, having a Displair to mess around with would be pretty cool. The price of this thing puts it firmly out of the "pretty cool" range for most consumers, though: if the Displair ever makes it to mass production, the expected price is gonna be somewhere between $4,000 and $30,000.

'Course, after you watch the video below, maybe you'll be willing to forego a new car or two in favor of a magical fog display.

[Video]

Source: DVICE

Displair magical multitouch fog Pictures

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