

Show HN: A candle animation, a volume renderer, and a bundle of LEDs - TheZenPsycho
http://dev.moorescloud.com/2012/12/18/reinventing-fire/

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bigiain
Anti-aliasing on a ~50 voxel display _sounds_ like overthinking the problem,
but the result seems to indicate it was a great approach. It's quite pretty…

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andrewcooke
that's really cool. but really, it won't be functional in 20 years will it?
and really, it's not more beautiful than a candle, is it? and really, we don't
need more crap, do we?

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simias
For me the main selling point would be that it's less dangerous that a candle
I think. But yeah, not exactly vital.

It was still interesting to see their approach on "how to make something feel
like real candlelight" with the timelapse image.

EDIT: I now see that they're asking for $700,000 on kickstarter. They probably
won't reach their goal (they'd need to get 450k in 67 hours) but I wonder why
they ask for so much money to create something like that.

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TheZenPsycho
There is a spreadsheet publically available. The short answer is that the way
kickstarter works, 65% of whatever you take goes back out as rewards,fees,etc
and It takes ~250k to tool up for manufacture. Other kickstarter hardware
projects try to strategise by asking low, hoping to overshoot the goal. In
truth, a lot of Kickstarter projects ask for much less than they really need
to succeed and deliver. We took a risk and decided to be totally honest.

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afandian
I couldn't help but think many of the downsides for the candle (sticky mess,
unsafe, respiratory aggravation, dangerous) applied to electronics
manufacture. But out of sight, out of mind.

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DrMiaow
Cool. Reminds me of the old Amiga demo days and many nights spent perfecting
"Fire" demos.

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antihero
Why not use one LED and just vary the brightness?

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TheZenPsycho
It can do things other than be a candle. For example, you can hook it up to
your tinderbox and have it alert you when the build fails, with each LED
cooresponding to different thingies. If you wish.

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jgeorge
Its an Ambient Orb on steroids. I love stuff like this. It's a shame the
kickstarter goal is so high, I don't think it'll fund.

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talmir
Site is down at the time of this comment. (11:53 Greenwich mean time, Iceland)

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talmir
Up now :) (13:28)

Looks nice, always fun to see hardware making it on the frontpage.

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kcarruthers
you broke the blog server dude!!!!

