Do you want to show that new YouTube video to your friends, but don’t like the idea of crowding around a tiny screen? Or perhaps you have an important document on your Smartphone to share during a large meeting. You could try a phone with a built-in projector, but wouldn’t it be easier to use your regular device? Now you can, thanks to “virtual projection”, a system for sharing your screen on to any nearby display.

It works like this: when you hold your phone up to the screen of a computer running the virtual projection software, the phone’s camera constantly captures and compares images from the screen to work out its location. This information is passed back to the computer via Wi-Fi to place the virtual projection in the right place on the screen.

Moving the phone will rotate and distort the image just like a regular optical projector, but it is also possible to turn this off, giving you a stable image even if you move and allowing you to put the phone down. Multiple users can also place images on the same screen, allowing them to work together.

Authour: Jacob Aron, technology reporter

Virtual Projection Video

So what do you think, could you see yourself using a new technology like this, or is this a solution to a problem that already has an answer?