Oh....that project is a journey with a wide horizon.
Running **projectM** (the open-source MilkDrop-style music visualizer) on a **holographic fan** would look like a floating, transparent, audio-reactive light sculpture rather than a normal screen visualization.
Here’s what you’d likely see:
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### 1. Black becomes invisible — visuals float in air
Hologram fans create transparency by making black pixels emit no light, so the dark background of projectM disappears. The bright psychedelic shapes, plasma waves, fractals, and tunnel effects would appear as **glowing neon forms suspended in mid-air**.
### 2. Bright, saturated presets work best
ProjectM presets with:
- High contrast
- Bold colors
- Glowing edges
- Smooth gradients
…would look striking. Dark, low-contrast, or heavily texture-based presets would become muddy or almost invisible.
### 3. The circular display changes composition
Most projectM presets are designed for a **rectangular 16:9 or 4:3 frame**. A hologram fan is usually circular or annular:
- Corners get cropped or letterboxed.
- Center content may be obscured by the physical motor/hub in the middle.
- Radial or mandala-like presets feel natural; rectangular compositions may look off-center.
If you can crop or shift the output to a **circular safe area**, the results improve a lot.
### 4. Fine detail gets lost, motion becomes more abstract
Hologram fans typically have effective resolutions around 720p–1080p but with a coarse LED pitch. Fine lines, small text, or high-frequency noise can shimmer, blur, or produce moiré. Fast zooms and rotations in projectM may create **radial motion artifacts** because the fan spins at a fixed speed. Some people find the strobing intense — it’s best in a dark room.
### 5. The “3D” effect depends on the preset
True hologram fans show pre-rendered 3D objects by displaying different perspectives as the fan rotates. ProjectM is normally a **2D shader-based visualizer**, so most presets will appear as flat luminous planes floating in space, not full 3D objects.
However, projectM does have some 3D-like presets with perspective, tunnels, and depth. Those would look more convincingly holographic, as if you’re looking through a glowing portal or into a floating wormhole.
### 6. Overall aesthetic
Imagine the most vivid MilkDrop visuals — liquid plasma, neon fractals, twisting light ribbons — but rendered as a **ghostly hologram** you could almost walk around. In a dark room, it would feel like a living, breathing light entity reacting to the music.
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### Practical setup notes
To try it:
- Connect a PC, Raspberry Pi, or Android device running projectM to the fan’s HDMI input.
- Set the fan’s native resolution and run projectM fullscreen.
- Choose presets with strong contrast and avoid busy corners.
- Use a dark background and low ambient light for maximum effect.
- Some fans accept video via USB/SD card; you could render projectM output to a file and loop it, but real-time audio reactivity is much better.
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### Bottom line
ProjectM on a hologram fan would look like **translucent, music-driven abstract art floating in space** — beautiful, but limited by the fan’s circular shape, resolution, and the fact that projectM’s 2D visuals only partially exploit the fan’s 3D illusion. With the right presets and a dark room, it would still be an impressive centerpiece.
#cyberpunkcoltoure one of those...?
