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From: cmcmanis%pepper@Sun.COM (Chuck McManis)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Re: Mega-Monitor
Message-ID: <23912@sun.uucp>
Date: Tue, 21-Jul-87 15:09:35 EDT
Article-I.D.: sun.23912
Posted: Tue Jul 21 15:09:35 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 23-Jul-87 04:45:35 EDT
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Reply-To: cmcmanis@sun.UUCP (Chuck McManis)
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
Lines: 26

The goal :
	10' X 10' screen displaying an image 13K X 13K pixels. (In color)

    Out of the box you won't find anything. For lower resolutions
check out 'JumboTron' made by Sony for sports stadiums.

    I saw a display once (back when hi-res color was very expensive) which
consisted of four crts, mounted in a rack side by side, in a 2 X 2 array.
The crts had fresnel(sp?) lenses in front of them to magnify the screens 
such that they abutted each other. Using a 13" screen (which is actually
n x n where n ~ 13/1.4 ~ 9") and 1K x 1K resolution. An array of 13 by
13 monitors would be (13/1.41)*13/12 ~ 119 inches ~ 10'. At a distance
of twenty feet you could probably ignore the edge effects of the crts.
Crude yes, and you would need 169 frame buffers (assuming 24 bits/pixel)
thats 507 megs of frame store (maybe you could use it as a ram disk when
the monitors were off ?) 

    A somewhat more practical approach would be to use lasers rather
than crts. Modulate a laser in much the same way as a crt and use three
of them to scan the screen (R, G, B). In either case you are talking
big bucks here.


--Chuck McManis
uucp: {anywhere}!sun!cmcmanis   BIX: cmcmanis  ARPAnet: cmcmanis@sun.com
These opinions are my own and no one elses, but you knew that didn't you.