People tweeting stuff. We allow tweets from anyone.
RULES:
Around when I got my first decent projector, I hooked it up to one of my consoles and set it all up in my basement which, as you might guess, was underground. I didn't use a screen, just pointed it at the wall, as in the OP. In a similar timeframe, Last of Us was popular.
The menu screen for that game involved a view through a window. I won't lie; at least once I had to remind myself that it wasn't real.
Well now I want to try it.
It was a 1080p projector that I've long since given away and, looking up screenshots of the menu screen, the window was at an angle... So it's very possible that my memory was doing most of the heavy lifting there.
That said, don't let me stop you - projectors and PS4's aren't that expensive these days and, if you have a basement, it's fairly likely you have walls. Please report back to me with your findings!
Every time I've gone down the projector shopping rabbit hole, I've gotten analysis paralysis, but maybe one day...
I have a 10 year old projector (1080p) in my basement projecting onto a large screen (120ish inches maybe?). It's fantastic for movies.
if you have a giant wall, it's worth it. I had two, I forget how much the BenQ one I bought was, but I know the cheap ass one I bought at 75% off was like £300. Split between multiple people.
It was fucking awesome. Pure happenstance. My housemates were going to drive to a place with a supermarket and big box stores, and I wanted to catch a ride to see if there was some tech I could get. We did the shopping and I said "let's go to PC world" or whatever it was called. They asked me what the fuck it was that I could possibly get from there.
Liquidation sale.
Not a fucking bullshit "liquidation sale" with 20% off. "We're going to shut this place down before corporate goes bust because no one in this shitty town has any money" liquidation sale. We got a £1200 projector for £300. It was worth every fucking penny, as we watched films in the living room and threw cartons of finished juice at the wall in protest at the shitty films we watched.
get one with reasonable reviews at a reasonable price. worry more about how you're going to be able to set it up with proper focus and angle etc
It was long enough ago that I don't remember which it was, but I had a 3d DLP 1080p Optoma ... It was close to the HD26, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't that, since I don't remember the flared lens. It looks like there is a wide range of prices for which that can be acquired, but I will say it was a damned good projector, especially if you wanted active 3d. If that's not a requirement (and it likely rarely is these days) I'm sure you could get something much cheaper.
addedum : The BenQ W1070 was about £600 in 2016 money, and in HD. I had a good time with it and would recommend. Make sure you can make the room quite dark during the day if you want to use it during the day. It did need to be propped up with some books to get the angle right, but I had a ghetto ass setup.
I can't vouch for how good that brand is in 2026, and I'm assuming HD isn't good enough for you
I at first assumed that the projected view in your post was of a Jurassic Park enclosure, and that the occasional T-Rex would emerge.
I caught myself trying to lean through a window in that game once, i was so into it
Some yearn for the cave. They will fight tooth and nail to stay.
It’s probably been 20 years, and I’m guessing that somebody could do something way more accurate with modern sensors, but I remember seeing somebody do a demo where they use the Wii sensor bar and LEDs attached to glasses to do head tracking on a window projection like that. The effect was highly convincing for what it was.
Why does a window projection need head tracking?
To change the perspective as you move around.
The only issue is it would only work for one person, if you have multiple people the affect would break.
I played with a similar setup using xbox 360 kinect, very fun tech!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_automatic_virtual_environment
The evolution of this is how they do 'virtual production', LED walls and tracked camera using realtime rendered scenes in Unreal Engine. You could make a relatively cheap version using something like Valve Lighthouses and a projector.
I saw someone online use a toy plane with magnets and a map with this. So when he would place the plane on different cities, it would change the view to a live feed from that city. It was very cool.
Anyone that doesn't understand this meme should look up the allegory of the cave, by Plato.
Anyhow, this is top tier meme posting, thank you TPM, always look forward to your stuff.
Sorry, I'm dumb. What does Plato have to do with this?
Plato's allegory of the cave, basically some prisoners chained down in a cave who can only see a cave wall. They mistake the shadows on the cave wall for reality. OP is drawing the obvious comparison.
Foolish prisoners. Why don't they just get unchained and go outside and experience reality?
Are you crazy? You were just out there and now that you're back, you can barely see anything around here. And you've changed, it's like you can't relate to anyone anymore, and you don't even seem to care what happens during our daily 16 hour wall marathon watch parties.
Clearly whatever's out there fucked you up and made you unable to enjoy normal things and fit in around regular people. And now you're telling us everything we've been doing all our lives was meaningless and fake and you want us to go out there and become like you?
Yeah, uh, fuck that. Now pipe down, I'm trying to watch this.
Isn't that how the story ends? It's admittedly been decades since I've read it though so maybe I'm wrong
Plato's allegory of the cave. It's a metaphor for the comfort we develop in (and often preference for) our less accurate concept of reality when faced with real discoveries that challenge our perspective.
In Plato's metaphor, the shadows on the wall. In the meme, a representation of a window rather than the real thing.
F. Can I monetize this dystopian trend by just pointing a camera out my window at my yard?
I've always thought that would be a genuinely cool idea: A camera on the outside of the wall, with a live feed to a projector inside, so you can just "see through" the wall when you want to.
Without motion tracking parallax it won't be convincing enough.
It's convincing enough for a silly meme.
When you’re laying in your 100 sq ft $1200 per month windowless apartment with no outside windows it’ll be good enough, since it’s not a big enough room to move enough to notice the lack of parallax.
I'm not using my office ceiling.
I could project something up there, like a movie during night work or a webcam so I see it when I look up to heavens and appeal to an unjust god.
But can these run for 16 hours a day without dying?
You could do whatever they do at the Venetian in Vegas.
What do they do at the Venetian in Las Vegas? I actually stayed there in 2019, so I really should know what you mean.
Oh! They're the ones with the indoor canal space and singing gondoliers, right? Is the sky an all-day projection?
They put up a fake sky on the ceiling to create the illusion that it's daytime and you're outside all day.
I actually thought they had screens or projections, but now I'm not sure. Maybe I'm thinking of somewhere else.
Yeah, I totally remember it now. But I have no idea what it looks like with the lights off. Like, is that painted on and just lit, or is it projected; yeah.
That would actually be cool and I've spent some time looking for it.
There are a bunch of ceiling star projectors. They have a wide range of prices but none of them comes close to lying in bed and looking at starts.
I've seen that a couple of times on youtube but always thought it won't look aa convincing in reality.
Also, projectors have really high power usage so I wouldn't be comfortable leaving one running that long effectively being a screensaver
Plato: It's the big one! Elizabeth! I'm comin' to ya honey!
People don't know about the Cave 2 which, while few remaining manuscripts survive was a commercial success for Plato.
The story follows our intrepid explorer who, upon leaving the cave, finds himself atop a pair of butt cheeks, only to look up and see a figure holding a cave silhouette.
The third one really was trash though and we're all the better for it being lost to antiquity.
So do you sit in a dark room pretending it's day outside or do you turn on the lights and ruin he projection?
I would assume it would be based on the setup, usually projectors are still able to be visible with the lights on, not as well but still pretty decently. school projectors (if they even still use those) were good examples of that where they would project onto the white board with the lights on
🎶 But they're like the people chained up in the cave, in the allegory of the people in the cave by the Greek guy 🎶
Man I downloaded this shit last week for crimson desert content and it's throwing projectors at me left and right and this is not helping 💀
Do you actually have need for a low fidelity replica of outside that never changed with seasons nor had an interesting bird to look at?
I think I'd feel better if I could project a snow storm on the wall in the middle of vietnamese summer. I don't need a bird, I just need something to distract me from the fact that I will feel only oppressive heat and humidity for like 9 months.
Understandable.
Here in Canada when it's the winter and you look outside and know there's 5 more months of this it sucks.
I like winter, but damn I really wanted spring to come for the last three months.
I used to feel that way when I lived up north, but the heat changed sonething in me, now -20 feels wonderful. Its a shame all the cold places are either expensive, Russia, or like a remote part of Pakistan. Why can't we just move like half of vietnam or colombia or Yunnan 2 or 3 km directly upwards?
I'd probably put it on an aquarium setting if I could find one. Could probably hook it up with an RPi pre damn easy if not.
No, but... [Marge Simpson "I just think it's neat" goes here]