OpenLase Simulator (Bad Apple)

This isn't a real laser! It's an OpenGL-based laser simulator which attempts to simulate the behavior and quirks of a real laser scanner to a reasonable degree. It works straight off of the JACK sample stream, so it knows nothing about frame boundaries, just like the real laser. Instead, it attempts to simulate persistence of vision. In other words, if the image is too complex, it will flicker, just like the real laser.

This video flickers less than my earlier Bad Apple video for three reasons: because the camera exaggerates flicker (in real life it doesn't look that bad, but the camera shutter makes it look much worse), because I've improved the video tracer algorithm quite a bit since last time, and because the persistence of the simulator is slightly higher than what you experience in real life. It's still worse than it should be, though, since YouTube decimated it to 30fps (it originally renders at 60fps or whatever your monitor's refresh rate is)

I've pushed it to the OpenLase repo, so now if you don't have a laser you can still play with OpenLase and get an idea of how it would look in real life :)

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• openlase
• simulator
• opengl
• laser
• scanner
• bad apple

[Stoney3K]

Does the simulator also simulate scanner inertia and limited bandwith? So you could simulate how it would look on a 20Kpps scan kit instead of a faster 40K one?

[cyborgtroy]

"I want to see OpenGL lasers"

holy shit it's Touhou

what was I thinking about?

[chirauranow]

@DiGiTaLM4N The original was "Touhou Bad Apple!! PV " which was uploaded to niconico video Japan.

[DiGiTaLM4N]

What was this song from ?

[sebapardo2]

@guga1123 Gracias socio :D

[guga1123]

@sebapardo2 la cancion se llama bad apple y es de un juego llamado tohou

[psychcf]

I would love it if you could write an article about how you made your laser projector, really impressive stuff.

[SquidMan64]

Nice stuff marcan :) Thanks for writing a simulator so us who are too electronically impaired can screw with this!

[schmidtbag]

this is really well done, whats the song called?

[sebapardo2]

Me podrías decir La canción?..

Buenísimo vídeo ;)