Panasonic's projector arm is sponsoring the first six of these things. Illumibot calls the vehicle an IllumiBeast, it is a Cybertruck kitted out for projection mapping, and each one carries a PT-MZ20K under the MEVIX banner: 20,000 lumens, 3LCD, laser, WUXGA.
Read that spec line again. WUXGA. Twenty thousand lumens and 1920x1200 pixels. If you have ever argued with someone about whether brightness or resolution matters more, here is the pro end of the industry answering with its own money. On a courthouse facade at night the pixel count vanishes into the brickwork, and every last lumen shows. It is the exact inversion of what gets marketed to us at home, where a 700 lumen box gets a 4K sticker and the brightness figure hides in a footnote.
The part I am less sure about is the pitch around it. Point your phone at a wall, describe what you want, and the platform detects surfaces and maps the projection in seconds. Anyone who has spent an evening warping a test grid onto anything that is not a flat rectangle knows where that falls over. Windows, downpipes, ledges, a surface that is not perpendicular to anything. I would love to see the output on a building with actual architecture rather than a rendered mockup.
Still, 31 cities in 31 days through July, applications open to schools and parks departments at no cost, is a genuinely interesting way to burn a sponsorship budget. Has anybody here actually seen one of these parked up and running? Curious what the throw distance and the ambient light situation looked like in person.
Read that spec line again. WUXGA. Twenty thousand lumens and 1920x1200 pixels. If you have ever argued with someone about whether brightness or resolution matters more, here is the pro end of the industry answering with its own money. On a courthouse facade at night the pixel count vanishes into the brickwork, and every last lumen shows. It is the exact inversion of what gets marketed to us at home, where a 700 lumen box gets a 4K sticker and the brightness figure hides in a footnote.
The part I am less sure about is the pitch around it. Point your phone at a wall, describe what you want, and the platform detects surfaces and maps the projection in seconds. Anyone who has spent an evening warping a test grid onto anything that is not a flat rectangle knows where that falls over. Windows, downpipes, ledges, a surface that is not perpendicular to anything. I would love to see the output on a building with actual architecture rather than a rendered mockup.
Still, 31 cities in 31 days through July, applications open to schools and parks departments at no cost, is a genuinely interesting way to burn a sponsorship budget. Has anybody here actually seen one of these parked up and running? Curious what the throw distance and the ambient light situation looked like in person.
