Midair User Interfaces Employing Particle Screens

Recent developments with low-cost optical sensors and ultralight, mobile fogscreens enable new applications such as midair volumetric screens and augmented reality. The major advantages of the fogscreen are its walk-through and immaterial nature, translucency, good image quality, possibility for direct interaction, and the intriguing appearance of the screen. Fogscreens can create a collaborative visualization space or even personal views for each viewer. Dual-sided face-to-face interaction mimics most real-world competitive games and sports and enables body language and free switching of sides. This article reports the authors' experiments with these emerging technologies and their suitability for novel midair user interfaces.