originally posted in r/interestingasfuck

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    Results: * Untrustworthy (U): 21 * Trustworthy (T): 17 * OP got whooshed (W): 0

  • Holy shit did you just throw this together? This is perfect.

    Hah, thanks. Yep, I figured it'd be better to show people since I had my software open

    This seems way more difficult to process that just typing the letter u

    Hah, it would seem that way for some, hopefully it helps people understand the size thing better - That the horse will not change size in the frame if the camera and projector are close to each other and moving together. Also, shows why we couldn't see the shadow of the pedestrian.

    We... could see the shadow of the pedestrian, actually. I paused it to check

    From the projector cam?

    So yes, you agree with me then. We cannot see the shadow from the projector cam, this is the illusion that people were calling out as fake, I was demonstrating that it's easily done if the cam is close to the projector.

    edit: I replied thinking you were the OP commenter I was asking for clarification from, my bad. They always vanish when asked 🤷

    oh, no hi I just didn't get a notif. I think I misunderstood your point at first, we're agreed on our agreeance!

    In that case it explains why we could

    Thanks! It looks pretty good but it is most obvious at the end when you can see it go behind the guy

    Least obvious parallax error

    Not sure that I follow, do you mean I should have added a moving guy in there?

    It lights him up too and leaves a guy shaped shadow at that time??

    That's perspective, I clearly saw the guy at the end get hit with it as the bike rode past. You can see him get hit with a quick flash.

  • This is genuinely so strange.

    Parts of this feel obviously fake, like how crisp the projection is, how it doesn't seem to grow or shrink much when whatever it's supposed to be projecting on changes, those sorts of things.

    Then at other angles, it behaves about like I would expect it to.

    This is either a really weirdly inconsistent fake, or something else is going on.

    Compression probably isn't helping, and the frame rate of the horse projection isn't the same as the phone, so it creates weird behaviours. It's most likely real though, nothing in it is out of the ordinary when you dig in to it.

    Five seconds in, it’s projecting an image down the hallway and over the empty space between the buildings. Fake.

    It sucks that you’re being downvoted by people who give one-word responses when you’re right. 

    It seems like nobody responding has ever actually used a projector. The farther away the object being projected upon is, the larger and more blurry the image is. 

    Sure, there may be buildings further back in that gap, but the horse doesn’t change shape, size, or definition when the corner of that building hits. 

    ETA: Light does not work this way. the tail would appear on the back wall of the garage, not the side. The light hitting the wall would be stretched and distorted because the surface is at an angle. 

    https://i.redd.it/5khff4t9lh5g1.gif

    Here's a demo to address the distortion comment. The image does distort in real space, but from the angle of the projector, it does not distort no matter the distance or angle to the surface

    The projected image does change shape and size from a different angle than the one close to the projector. It does not change relative to the follow-cam, close to the source.

    ETA: Light does not work this way. the tail would appear on the back wall of the garage, not the side. The light hitting the wall would be stretched and distorted because the surface is at an angle. 

    From a different angle, this would be apparent, yes, but the camera is close to the projector, so the distortion is imperceptible.

    It seems like nobody responding has ever actually used a projector. The farther away the object being projected upon is, the larger and more blurry the image is. 

    You have probably not used a laser projector then, they are essentially focus free. This is a laser projector, hence the imperceptible change in sharpness close or far.

    edit #1 for correction: Apologies it is not a laser projector, I read another commenter saying it was and trusted that. It looks like it's the Optoma H190X, whilst very bright, it isn't laser. The focus must not be much of a deal with this flat vector shape though, as it appears relatively sharp (I haven't pixel peeped it mind)

    edit #2: Updated the model, the creator confirmed it in another reply on his insta.

    You're not accounting for the perspective of the camera

    I actually took the time to pause it to look and you can clearly see it on the buildings further back but not as bright. When it hits an actual gap there is no projection. If you pause it and look for yourself you can see it.

    No it's real. It projected on the person and little traffic pylons.

    Turn your brightness up

    Except the projectors that could project that image at those distances in those lighting conditions are a lot bigger and power hungry.

    They don't need to be a big projector, this model is specced at 3600 3900 lumens which would be well above the streets lights. It's "max projection distance" is nearly 10 meters.

    Power consumption is 295W 225W maximum, so 100-150Wh would get you enough time to run these short experiments. He has a backpack, so it might be one of those big portable camping batteries.

    edit #2: Here's the battery he used, confirmed in his insta comments: https://eu.ecoflow.com/products/river-2-portable-power-station?variant=46822257951063

    It gets bigger the way you’d expect it to when it’s projected further away, it’s just further away in that case, so it looks smaller than it would up closes.

    The image is so clear-seeming because everything else is blurred from the motion, while it is stationary to the camera viewpoint.

    There is such little parallax error that the camera must be nearly on top of the projector. It does shift with the car going in front, so I'm inclined to believe this is accurate.

    Right? It got me thinking that is both. Like maybe they edited over the projection to make it seem brighter and sharper? And along the way they made mistakes with sizing in certain areas?

    As a video artist and visual effects guy I can tell you it would be FAR more difficult to convincingly fake this than to just actually do it. I don't see anything off about it. It's very clearly just white horse animation on black background being projected IRL.

    The best lies always have a bit of truth

  • Charrrrlieeeeee I wanna go to Candy Mountain 

    Wake up Charlieeeeeeee

    How's your back pain?

    SHUN THE NON-BELIEVER!

  • Yeah, and the outline is crisp. I doubt even a laser projector can have that sharpness at a distance. So much went wrong with this.

    Edit: yeah impressive projectors exist, but it is more likely than not that the video is faked.

    https://preview.redd.it/l79qbaaim05g1.jpeg?width=1206&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e0810518dff45b7e56de02c1d5b9e3c7d0ce7dd1

    Apart from that building looking thing.

    It’s just set back further from the road, so it’s not lit up by the street lighting.

    The end video of it going over the pedestrian and all the changes in depth on the buildings would have been absolute nightmare to CGI.

    It’s literally just a white gif of a horse running on a black background being projected onto the opposite side of the street

    edit: Misread, see replies

    Think about that last bit a few times "if it's projected on nothing" it should be visible? That doesn't make sense

    That was a reference to this above comment.

    https://preview.redd.it/sd5ht2xq515g1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8b18b49a0829e032f2ee54c16b6840c86dca7bb5

    They claimed it couldn't be real because it was "projecting onto nothing". I was just saying that if it was truly projecting onto nothing then we would see it in front of where we also see sky. You can only see it when there's something to reflect it. In this case a building that is further back.

    ETA: I can see how you thought I was saying the opposite though. I meant projecting onto nothing in the same way GGunner723 did. As in; it's reflecting back to the camera with nothing to reflect it, which is impossible. I just don't agree with them that it actually did that. You took projecting onto nothing to mean not projecting onto anything, which is totally possible and exactly what we see when it gets to the gap between buildings.

    My bad, I read it as nothing in real life, not taking it as fake

    No worries. Sorry about the edit after you replied. I was already writing it when you sent it. It's just how I comment. I always think of a better way to say something or something good to add after the fact.

    ETA: Oh hey it's you again

    for real I almost thought this sub was trolling, it's very obviously real

    A projector wouldn't be able to adjust its focus so quickly and reliably moving at speed. The building is much further back and the horse would've became out of focus and been a white splotch.

    while i agree that it's fake, you don't see the clear outline of the building it's projecting on?

    Turn your brightness up.

    I do that all the time

    Wow, 900 + upvotes and no one can clearly see that's a building setting further back. Do you not see the window with a light on right above the end of the tail. You can see where it's edge is. And if you move the video further up you can see an actual gap where the projection doesn't show up because there's actually nothing there to project on.

    You mean the giant building?

  • Depending on the type of projector (regular or short throw) it might have to be pointed downward to get the right projection placement. I have a short throw and it needs to be pointed way way down towards the floor to project at eye level.

    I'm more interested in where they plugged the thing in

    It's not inconceivable that there's a powerful powerbank hooked up underneath the bike. There are such things as small portable generators capable of powering some heavy-duty equipment.

    Yeah, but we literally see the bike itself, and later in the clip, the bike riding past, both with the cords not attached to anything on the bike.

    It literally is inconceivable.

    You can see the cords when he first comes into frame it’s attached to his backpack

  • That projector would have to be REALLY powerful to be that bright

    It shows you in the first clip, the projector is on, and that it is showing the image on the wall. The rest of the video, the projector is at the same distance, so it is bright enough.

    It doesn't matter how far or close the object is, from this frame of reference, the size won't change if the camera is close enough to the source. His camera / phone isn't much more than 20cm from the lens of the projector (see more detail in other posts: https://www.instagram.com/p/DQJOcIXDNgB/ ), so it won't distort much at all at that distance. It's still a bit distorted on the car, which is expected as it's closer

    Why do I have to dig this far down to see a comment that understands how things work

    So the last shot of the video you just linked had the video be perfectly still while the guy had bike slow from being in motioned to stopped. Seems to make it even more fake.

    He might be doing some live tracking alignment, which is fairly trivial nowadays, (e.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6c8ug3D96U). It could also just be they did a static projection for the last shot, to make sure the client's logo was clear, would need additional information.

    you don't understand how projectors work I think

    Why is everyone acting like it is common to have a projector in 2025? I kinda doubt all of you saying you "know how projectors work" actually do.

    I actually have a projector. Its a pain in the ass to focus on a flat, white screen. It would be impossible for it to be sharply focused on several different surfaces while moving.

    You have a real projector? In 2025? And you know how the science works?

    I think we might have found one of Jeff Bezos’s alt accounts guys, this guys got a projector

    you don't understand how projectors work, it's been explained already by a ton of people

    A lot of people have projectors nowadays, actually. They're pretty convenient and affordable.

    Agreed. I was scratching my head at that. Pretty much everyone I know has a projector... my brother has like 7. None of them are good high quality projectors, all cheapo sub $100 projectors when brand new. But that's the thing... you can get a projector for like nothing if you go used.

    Also, if you go to noizebro on Instagram, he uses the same projector doing similar stuff in similar lightning conditions, and it clearly is a projector with enough brightness and resolution.

    Well it just looks the same because the car is close to the camera, so that compensates for the smaller size. Also you have no depth perception watching a 2D video so it’s also hard to tell.

    Also you can tell it’s not the exact same, because when you look at the frames when the projection is “entering” and “exiting” the car, you can see the image gets cut slightly at the edge of the car.

    I thought it would do wonders here. Instead, it has me questioning ppls eyesight and brainpower

    Obviously he used magic

    Also, its bumping and jitter looks nothing like I'd expect from being strapped to a bike.

    The size of the horse is a matter of perspective; obviously the true size of the horse changes depending on how far away it is, but if you’re looking at it from the perspective of the projector itself (i.e. the camera is on top the projector), the amount of the frame that the horse takes up will never change- and neither will the position! When the horse is projected further away, it gets bigger, but it also shrinks just as just as much from our perspective, leaving it the same “size.”

    Of course it appears to be the same size from this angle? Tf you mean lol?

    If the camera is next to the projector the image retaining it's size is exactly how this would work

    I love how you're being downvoted while being right, beautiful

    Right, seems a lot of folks drank their brawndo before typing on their keyboards. Baffles me how many blind lead the blind these days, then have the audacity to ask if we can see. A bunch of Dunning Krugers

    Where the camera is has nothing to do with the size of the projection. Projections change size based on the distance between the projector and the surface it’s projecting onto, so the projection should be changing size noticeably when cars pass closer to the projector or when the buildings are significantly further away.

    Wow. You are so very bad at this.

    Seriously how can you talk such utter crap so confidently?

    Please tell me youre trolling. Im serious. Draw a diagram from an eye seeing a tree. Then reverse those arrows. How big is the tree in the eye?

  • U when it passed over a tunnel near the beginning it didn’t get distorted or disappear at all. Also it’s the exact same size and proportions when it’s (supposedly) projected against a wall on the other side of the street as it is on a car passing right next to them. The shape and proportions of the horse is always consistent even when different parts of it are being projected onto different surfaces which are very far apart from each other.

    Not saying this is real, but that's exactly what you'd expect due to perspective IF the camera is close to the source. There has to be some offset, of course, as they can't occupy the same exact space, so the distortion error would increase the closer a surface is to the camera and source, but the further away, the error would reduce.

  • U - it is not a very good fake.

    cause it's real

  • Wow yes let's shine a bright white projected horse into people's windows this fine evening

  • U--the horse falls behind toward the end. That shouldn't happen with the setup they've shown.

    It’s just because he’s turned slightly to the right when he passes the camera.

    This is the first objection here that isn't laughably dumb.
    didn't quite see itanrd will try to look

    Im not entirely convinced you are right like im not entirely convinced of any of this.

    (Apart from all the other detectives here being blind and retarded)

  • Leave it to redditors to not understand how a projector works lmfao

    It has been entertaining me all day, wild.

    so many certified reddit experts being so confidently wrong about something so simple is truly a sight to behold

  • U when he passed the person on the street the light would have shined on the person, but instead it stayed behind him on the wall

    There is a shadow, it’s just the person is blocking their own shadow from the view of the camera and projector.

    There likely is some sliver of a shadow somewhere, but it’s hard to see because it’s a blurry moving image, and the distance between the person and the wall is negligible compared to the distance between the person and the projector.

    The farther away the projector is, the less the shadow will “grow” in comparison to the object that is making the shadow, so therefore it’s harder to see it.

    There’s no visible shadow because the camera is aligned with the projector. There is a shadow being cast, but it’s perfectly hidden behind the pedestrian because of the camera angle.

    The camera is literally right on top of the projector. When shown from different angles like when its over the gate on the wall, you can see the shadows and the broken horse image.

    It did though. It lit him right up.

    But left no shadow on the wall.

    The light source and camera are aligned, you wouldn't see a shadow due to perspective...

    Have you watched the video?

    Parallax,  shadows cast by something in the foreground would move across the background. 

    Yes, I have, and you would only see shadows from a position offset from the projector. You do not understand perspective

    Go into a dark room and record a video on your phone with flash on. Depending on the distance between your flashlight and camera, everything in the video will look to have no shadow or only a very thin sliver, no matter how you move the camera. Parallax doesn't come into play for shadows when the observer and light source are moving together.

    I think they mean it would have shined ON the person and not THROUGH the person. There's no shadow which is what lights shining on things causes

    You cannot see the shadow, because the source and camera are so close. It looks weird for sure, but not the best reason it could be fake

  • This is a laser projector. They don't have to focus for different distances the same way that traditional projectors have to.

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  • T - I think it's likely real. Some people brought up some really good points about the focus and crispness, but I think with a full white silhouette, and at those viewing distances, that wouldn't really matter. The only thing that would look out of focus is the edges, since the horse has no other details. And the camera is far away enough that those blurry lines should look crisp enough in the video. The image also jumps up and down in a way that looks like what a projector on a bike should look like. And the image behaves correctly in the clip at the end that was shot from the sidewalk. Even if the rest of the video is fake, that part is real. Also this wouldn't be hard to do. Why not just do it for real? It would be way harder to fake so realistically.

    Now about the size of the image...

    I would guess that most of us have interacted with a projector before, probably at school, and the amount of people who don't seem to understand that a projector projects a cone of light is mind boggling. It's not parallel lasers. Most of us should know intuitively that when a projector is further away from a surface, the image gets bigger compared to the surface, not compared to the field of view of an observer at the same distance as the projector. Everybody keeps saying the size of the image doesn't change, but it does, and exactly how you would expect it to. When projecting on something further away the image gets bigger, but since things further away take up less of the field of view of the camera, the image looks the same size to the camera. To an observer standing next to one of those far buildings, the horse would be huge (but dim).

    I know I'm gonna get downvoted for this, since everybody else who brought up this observable fact did as well. But to me the fact that so many people will come to a conclusion and confidently argue it, to the point of hurling insults at people who disagree, without actually thinking about it for two seconds, means we are completely fucked.

    Edited to add more details and the T

    But to me the fact that so many people will come to a conclusion and confidently argue it without actually thinking about it for two seconds means we are completely fucked.

    The modern internet is built and thrives on this exact thing, engagement, so I suspect some are bots to wind everyone else up and get the discussion going.

    I found this a fun thing to investigate. I got called out for saying the size doesn't change - but I was saying it in the context that it does not change in the frame, I should have been more clear, but I agree, wild that people are so sure and double down on being wrong.

    I hope you know I wasn't calling you out for that. I saw your other replies and totally agree. I was talking about the people who are voting U and justifying it by saying that the horse stays the same size when the car passes. Even though a car is much smaller than two or three stories of that one building that's further back. Even one story, as we see it for most of the video.

    No, not at all, you clarified on that other comment, and I see how we crossed wires and corrected, which is how all good debates/discussions should be IMO!

    Finally a logical person

  • T - It just looks kind of weird because the camera is looking at almost the same perspective as the projector, but all of the “physics” seems to be correct.

    You can notice whenever it projects on something close, it’s brighter, and when it’s on something farther away, it’s darker. I’m pretty sure it would be much harder to accurately color the image frame by frame (and make the clip at the end), then to just put a projector on a bike. It’s really not that unbelievable.

  • T - there's a lot of perspective shenanigans going on, but there's quite a few elements in this video that would require a lot of extra effort to fake convincingly. This is at night with relatively sparse lighting, reducing the required Brightness for the beamer. The image also stops when there's no building to project on (at 6s it's projecting on a wall that's probably a few meters back, as indicated by the noticeable light falloff. but it also stops when that wall ends) the projection is occluded by the pedestrian at the end, And it also distorts a lot more in the foreground (when the car passes by). Maybe there's a bit of colour correction to make the horse appear brighter but I think this happened mostly as you see it in the video.

    Agreed, I don't think the projector is even that bright, just the camera exposure coming up to meet it, it's brighter than the street lamps, but not by a huge amount

  • Good example showing where the camera is offset from the projector, when it hits stuff close, the offset is really obvious, and reduces the further away the surfaces are.

  • Not to beat a DEAD horse

  • Dawg, that’s 100% how projectors work 💀

  • I think the scariest thing about AI is how many real videos people claim are fake.

    It consistently stays in front of everything in the background, people included. Fades when the building is in the background. (The part where people think it's projecting onto nothing) Pretty clearly real.

  • This is exactly what I use to imagine while on long drives as a kid

  • Oh man. I thought the horse was dead for a minute

  • That is in fact how projectors work. What am I missing here?

  • Why is this fake? Looks super real to me. No, I am not 55+ years old, but I do have experience with projectors and could still be gullible.

  • T - these goddamn people have never actually played with a projector in their lives

  • TIL reddit has no idea how light works.

  • I'm so confused by people thinking this is fake.

  • T - lot of yall have never used a projector

  • what is the point of faking this?

  • T How can anyone think otherwise

  • No, that's literally exactly how projectors work

  • T - the artist has made a few things like this.

    Agree there are some weird moments where the projection seems to lag—could be an angle thing or editing.

    Most of the other objections (shadows, projecting on “nothing,” relative size) are not based on an accurate understanding of projectors or the video. I think this would be quite difficult to fake.

  • U - Bunch of times you can see the horse reflect on nothing.

    Bunch of times you couldn't see the houses that are clearly just a yard further from the street.

    But you being bad at this doesn't make the video necessarily true

  • This needs to be higher up

  • T, I’m gonna freak out you guys are having a laugh. Every reflective bollard lights up and it lights up the inside of the Tesla and the houses, and it does warp for surfaces. It’s obviously not CGI, actually.

  • T - the amount of people not understanding how parallax, perspective and low energe laser projectors work, is astonishing .

  • U - that is (roughly) how projectors work but no where close to what the actual result would be.

    Yeah that's usually how these work. I got one of those mini ones back in the day where they showed themselves watching a movie on their ceiling at roughly 1080p resolution but when I got it itay have been 240p or so. This is pretty common for marketing with games having one small section they worked hard on for it to look good in a trailer or at a reveal but the real product will most likely be half as good.

  • I mean why would this be faked in the first place? It shouldn't be particularly hard to do with a good projector, I guess that could be too expensive. But, on the other hand in order to fake this you would need to spend so much time editing. And finally, the fact that this is actually pretty creative suggest whoever made this did not use AI. Also, there would almost certainly be some kind of AI fuckup on a video like this.

  • I actually believe this because someone I knew in college did this exact same thing for their final project...

  • T, it’s a projector

  • it syncs to your phone, you play whatev you want. how is this “untrustworthy”?

  • This would be a great way to blind people

  • Thats cool how theres no light coming out the projector but the horse is still kind enough to appear and manipulate the laws of matter and space to stay consistently the same size across varying surfaces and air jist for this tiktok

  • My opinion is that it’s faked with video “Blending Modes.” Blending modes in an app like Premier Pro (or photoshop for photos) will use a mathematical formula to multiply or add pixel values of layers — so that the image changes based on the brightness of the layer behind it. This makes the images super dynamic, adapting immediately to the background changing color, without any work on the editor’s part. It does not affect size or shape at all, though, which is what we see here. https://amadine.com/assets/img/articles/blend-modes/different-options-of-blend-modes@2x.jpg

  • i’m sorry but how are people thinking this was believable 😭 have they ever… used a projector ?????

  • U?

    The bit that bugs me is when it goes over a bright window and the image is still just as bright. Wouldn't the image almost disappear? The light coming from inside the window would surely be a lot brighter than the projector. Maybe I'm wrong

  • U - I think the most obvious error in this is the fact that the projection goes directly over someone at the end and they don’t get lit up at all

  • T

    The detective squad here is so laughably bad today. .

    God damn lads, if you weren't this dense you might even be able to process shame

  • T because I have eyes

  • T - sorry y'all but when the camera is from similar perspective to the light source, the light will appear as projected as long as there's a surface for it to hit. It will appear the same size regardless of the surface distance. The creator also has a bunch of other similar projector... projects that he's done in the past. Everyone saying U is being overly sceptical, which is good in this day and age, but wrong this instance. 

  • T some of you wouldn't believe a hurricane if it picked up your house

  • U but I mean it definitely is how projectors work. That’s not what makes it fake

  • This is a really good thread, so many people are confident about their answers on both sides but only one can be correct.

    T - I think its real but dont really have any proof, just enjoying the arguments on either side.

  • T

    This boths looks legit if you understand perspective and how projectors work but more importantly tbh the amount of CG and compositing work itd take to do this reasonably well is astronomical in comparison to doing it for real.

  • I saw this in r/nextfuckinglevel and most of the comments were calling it out as dumb or boring

  • T

    that's how projectors work

  • T Man, this sub... redditors are so overly confident... "The size doesn't change!", obviously it doesn't, the camera hasn't moved... "It's too bright/crisp!", are you an expert on projection tech? Did you know that on some (most) colour non-laser projectors you can remove the spinning colour filters (if the projector uses filters) to make a monochromatic one that is much much stronger? Just because you've seen one projector doesn't you've seen them all. What if it was a laser projector, what if it's modded, etc... many explanations need to be explored before coming to a conclusion, stop making assumptions...

    Do you know how difficult it would be to fake that last scene? You would need a full 3D scan of the wall to get those shadows. It's very obviously real.