The tech turning skyscrapers into adverts

A new projection technique for creating persistence of vision displays has been developed which allow displays to be up to 200m (656ft) tall.

The technology uses the persistence of vision phenomenon – an effect in the human eye.

It has the potential to turn tall buildings into adverts or art displays.

“When you look at any bright light and then you look away you see a ghost of that bright light for just a moment,” explains founder and CEO of Lightvert Daniel Siden.

“Our display takes a standard two dimension image and breaks it up into columns of pixel data and this single vertical line of light blinks out each column sequentially, so column one, two, three until it gets to the end of the image and then it starts over.

“So as your eye looks away it prints each column on your retina in a different location and your whole image is reassembled in your eye,” he added.

Moving strips of superfast, flashing LEDs have painted pictures or text in the air for a couple of decades, but Lightvert’s technology relies on our eyes to do the moving instead.

Creating displays over 3m tall using LEDs or other light sources can be challenging, explained Mr Siden, but their technology allowed much taller displays.

BBC Click’s Spencer Kelly finds out more.

Read more: How giant digital adverts could soon be in our cities.

See more at Click's website and @BBCClick.