We have done 7 years of research on this and just recently brought “Virtual Sun” to the market.
If you want to replicate a window, there is more than just lumens, CCT, and CRI. In order for your brain to really believe something is a window or a skylight, you also need:
1. Separate sun and sky light components. The real sun is very directional, by the time it reaches the earth the rays of sunlight diverge by only 0.5 degrees, have a much lower CCT than the sky, and a much brighter lux profile than the rays of light from the sky. Innerscene Model A7 outputs a rectangular sunbeam the diverges at less than 2 degrees and has a CCT of 4500K and is over 2500 lux at head level when sitting under it. Compared that with Coelux which has a 10 degree divergence angle. A7′s sky changes from 3000K up to well over 10000K.
2. The illusion of infinite space behind the fixture. The LEAD building standard requires all rooms to have eye level sight lines to the outdoors. Psychologically a room with windows is much more comfortable to work in than those lit only by artificial light, part of this is that most people have some level of claustrophobia—ranging from very mild (but noticeable) to panic attack inducing. Being able to see outside elevates a lot of that. We invented a new 3d display technology that allows users to see a sun at infinity, rather than something painting on the surface so it looks like a portal, not a TV or flat surface. This turns out to be an extremely hard problem, and I haven’t seen anyone else do it—even coelux’s sun only appears to be about 20 feet away from you.
3. Variability in CCT and intensity. Artificial light is too static which creates monotony, we are used to a variety of light profiles from natural light because of the earths rotation and atmospheric effects. When the sun is obscured by clouds temporarily, the light in the room changes slowly but very significantly—there is more diffuse light and less directional light, the CCT gets warmer, and brightness in the room may go up or down depending on the cloud thickness. Similar the CCT of light the sky changes throughout the day because of the earths orbit and how much light goes through the atmosphere at different angles. Innerscene is able to replicate this and it makes a room feel “alive” and connected to the outdoors, combined with the 3D effect it is comfortable to work/live in a space with no real windows for long periods of time.
You can’t comfortably work in a room where there is strong glare shinning in your eyes, which you would get if you buy random high powered LEDs and stuck them on your ceiling. From a perfectly diffusive light object like the sky there is no glare, but you will have glare from an unshielded light fixture unless it is well diffused or you have baffles that block the light which isn’t going down. Getting the directional profile of light is very important in this respect. Because our sun is always at a high angle (30 degrees) it doesn’t shine into your eyes directly and the sky portion of the fixture is perfectly diffused like the real sky.
(quick mod note: we normally delete first comments that are marketing a product. In this case it was surprisingly on topic and informative, but wanted to be clear that it wasn’t precedent setting)
Hey wow, neat company and I’m glad you posted about it here!
Unfortunately, I get the sense that your product is up in the Coelux range of pricing, because you don’t list the price. I think a lot of people here are going to immediately dismiss it as an option given that we can’t easily figure out how much it costs.
Your marketing is also aimed at businesses instead of homes. Especially given that my post was about home lighting, do you have anything you can share about home applications of your product?
(BTW, I remember reading an article in the 90s from a tech mag—like Wired or something—about crack.com, although I had no idea what you did, but the notable thing that stuck in my brain from that article was “why on earth would anyone name a company after a horrifically addictive drug?” I’d be curious if you know what article I’m talking about and whether you have a link to it!)
regarding crack.com, funny you connected the dots! I was a co-founder of that company which made the video game “Abuse” back in the 90s. The story behind the name… originally we called the company Chameleon Software but found someone else was using that name and had to change it. At the time the internet was just starting out and we thought it would be cool to use a domain name to name the company. We went through the dictionary and decided to call it “Crack Dot Com”, in those days we spelled out the whole thing. This is in part because at the time, there was a popular model for selling games called “Crack ware” because the first one is free, you get addicted and want to buy more :) We aspired to make addictive games and it was a bit edgy so I think it served us well. We didn’t realize it then, but crack was one of the top 100 search terms on the internet because people were looking for software cracks so we got some free traffic (though ended up getting a lot of piracy!!) haha. My second company, which turned into Thinstall (now Vmware ThinApp) started out looking at how to stop software piracy by making desktop software have a small SAS component that was required.
Anyway, I wanted to get back to my computer graphics roots so I started Innerscene to research how to make 3D displays that look like windows (VR without a headset). Turned out to be a much harder problem that I expected but we have something really amazing now.
yes! We published Abuse on DOS, Mac, and Linux (Redhat). When the company shutdown we released the code to the public domain so you can find it on many other platforms today including Windows or directly inside a browser ( https://playclassic.games/games/run-and-gun-dos-games-online/play-abuse-online/ ), and on iPhone/Android—though I find it hard to play on a mobile phone :)
As a rough guide, you can install 5-6 Innerscene A7 units in a project for the same price as one Coelux LC45 when you consider shipping and install cost.
Although understandably frustrating, we don’t have public pricing for a few reasons.
1. Our product is generally integrated into a construction project where the purchasing process can be more complex. In such a project, you might have a General Contractor who subcontracts out the electrical work to an electrician who purchases from a electrical distributor—and each party has a mark-up they charge for the value they are providing to the price to an end-user can vary. In addition, for larger projects there can be lighting designer or lighting sales agency involved that help with design, code compliance issues, etc. Often these guys will work for free but charge a mark-up on the products they specify. For these, reasons you find most companies that sell lighting into commercial or larger residential projects don’t have public pricing. Products you find at home depot or on amazon are usually commodity products where everyone has pretty much the same thing and companies compete mainly on price.
2. We work with partners who are allowed to set their own prices above our wholesale price to them. The amount of markup they charge will depend on how much of the above legwork mentioned above they take on, the size of the project, liability/warranty/service they take for the products they provide, etc. Depending on which country you are in, there could be import duties, shipping charges, etc. That being said, we do sell directly to customers for most of the world and happy to provide a quick price by email using info@innerscene.com
3. As we work on optimizing our products for higher volume and less expensive parts, we pass on cost savings to our customers—so our prices continue to come down year by year—for example A7 is >30% more affordable compared with A6 and it’s a better product. However, many places on the internet are permanent and we risk of people seeing a price from 3 years ago and not looking any further because it’s out of their budget.
Check out our product, it’s a far-cry from the $400 you mentioned but many times less expensive and thinner than coelux.
Check out a video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVV_-aB1jpg&t=57s
Some comparisons with Coelux: https://bit.ly/2YszzsO
We have done 7 years of research on this and just recently brought “Virtual Sun” to the market.
If you want to replicate a window, there is more than just lumens, CCT, and CRI. In order for your brain to really believe something is a window or a skylight, you also need:
1. Separate sun and sky light components. The real sun is very directional, by the time it reaches the earth the rays of sunlight diverge by only 0.5 degrees, have a much lower CCT than the sky, and a much brighter lux profile than the rays of light from the sky. Innerscene Model A7 outputs a rectangular sunbeam the diverges at less than 2 degrees and has a CCT of 4500K and is over 2500 lux at head level when sitting under it. Compared that with Coelux which has a 10 degree divergence angle. A7′s sky changes from 3000K up to well over 10000K.
2. The illusion of infinite space behind the fixture. The LEAD building standard requires all rooms to have eye level sight lines to the outdoors. Psychologically a room with windows is much more comfortable to work in than those lit only by artificial light, part of this is that most people have some level of claustrophobia—ranging from very mild (but noticeable) to panic attack inducing. Being able to see outside elevates a lot of that. We invented a new 3d display technology that allows users to see a sun at infinity, rather than something painting on the surface so it looks like a portal, not a TV or flat surface. This turns out to be an extremely hard problem, and I haven’t seen anyone else do it—even coelux’s sun only appears to be about 20 feet away from you.
3. Variability in CCT and intensity. Artificial light is too static which creates monotony, we are used to a variety of light profiles from natural light because of the earths rotation and atmospheric effects. When the sun is obscured by clouds temporarily, the light in the room changes slowly but very significantly—there is more diffuse light and less directional light, the CCT gets warmer, and brightness in the room may go up or down depending on the cloud thickness. Similar the CCT of light the sky changes throughout the day because of the earths orbit and how much light goes through the atmosphere at different angles. Innerscene is able to replicate this and it makes a room feel “alive” and connected to the outdoors, combined with the 3D effect it is comfortable to work/live in a space with no real windows for long periods of time.
You can’t comfortably work in a room where there is strong glare shinning in your eyes, which you would get if you buy random high powered LEDs and stuck them on your ceiling. From a perfectly diffusive light object like the sky there is no glare, but you will have glare from an unshielded light fixture unless it is well diffused or you have baffles that block the light which isn’t going down. Getting the directional profile of light is very important in this respect. Because our sun is always at a high angle (30 degrees) it doesn’t shine into your eyes directly and the sky portion of the fixture is perfectly diffused like the real sky.
(quick mod note: we normally delete first comments that are marketing a product. In this case it was surprisingly on topic and informative, but wanted to be clear that it wasn’t precedent setting)
Hey wow, neat company and I’m glad you posted about it here!
Unfortunately, I get the sense that your product is up in the Coelux range of pricing, because you don’t list the price. I think a lot of people here are going to immediately dismiss it as an option given that we can’t easily figure out how much it costs.
Your marketing is also aimed at businesses instead of homes. Especially given that my post was about home lighting, do you have anything you can share about home applications of your product?
(BTW, I remember reading an article in the 90s from a tech mag—like Wired or something—about crack.com, although I had no idea what you did, but the notable thing that stuck in my brain from that article was “why on earth would anyone name a company after a horrifically addictive drug?” I’d be curious if you know what article I’m talking about and whether you have a link to it!)
regarding crack.com, funny you connected the dots! I was a co-founder of that company which made the video game “Abuse” back in the 90s. The story behind the name… originally we called the company Chameleon Software but found someone else was using that name and had to change it. At the time the internet was just starting out and we thought it would be cool to use a domain name to name the company. We went through the dictionary and decided to call it “Crack Dot Com”, in those days we spelled out the whole thing. This is in part because at the time, there was a popular model for selling games called “Crack ware” because the first one is free, you get addicted and want to buy more :) We aspired to make addictive games and it was a bit edgy so I think it served us well. We didn’t realize it then, but crack was one of the top 100 search terms on the internet because people were looking for software cracks so we got some free traffic (though ended up getting a lot of piracy!!) haha. My second company, which turned into Thinstall (now Vmware ThinApp) started out looking at how to stop software piracy by making desktop software have a small SAS component that was required.
Anyway, I wanted to get back to my computer graphics roots so I started Innerscene to research how to make 3D displays that look like windows (VR without a headset). Turned out to be a much harder problem that I expected but we have something really amazing now.
Was this an “Abuse” game that was distributed somehow by Bungie? If so I played that and have some fond memories. Hi!
yes! We published Abuse on DOS, Mac, and Linux (Redhat). When the company shutdown we released the code to the public domain so you can find it on many other platforms today including Windows or directly inside a browser ( https://playclassic.games/games/run-and-gun-dos-games-online/play-abuse-online/ ), and on iPhone/Android—though I find it hard to play on a mobile phone :)
How expensive is it? Maybe there’s some reason that you don’t want an exact price in the comparison, but can you give a rough range?
As a rough guide, you can install 5-6 Innerscene A7 units in a project for the same price as one Coelux LC45 when you consider shipping and install cost.
Although understandably frustrating, we don’t have public pricing for a few reasons.
1. Our product is generally integrated into a construction project where the purchasing process can be more complex. In such a project, you might have a General Contractor who subcontracts out the electrical work to an electrician who purchases from a electrical distributor—and each party has a mark-up they charge for the value they are providing to the price to an end-user can vary. In addition, for larger projects there can be lighting designer or lighting sales agency involved that help with design, code compliance issues, etc. Often these guys will work for free but charge a mark-up on the products they specify. For these, reasons you find most companies that sell lighting into commercial or larger residential projects don’t have public pricing. Products you find at home depot or on amazon are usually commodity products where everyone has pretty much the same thing and companies compete mainly on price.
2. We work with partners who are allowed to set their own prices above our wholesale price to them. The amount of markup they charge will depend on how much of the above legwork mentioned above they take on, the size of the project, liability/warranty/service they take for the products they provide, etc. Depending on which country you are in, there could be import duties, shipping charges, etc. That being said, we do sell directly to customers for most of the world and happy to provide a quick price by email using info@innerscene.com
3. As we work on optimizing our products for higher volume and less expensive parts, we pass on cost savings to our customers—so our prices continue to come down year by year—for example A7 is >30% more affordable compared with A6 and it’s a better product. However, many places on the internet are permanent and we risk of people seeing a price from 3 years ago and not looking any further because it’s out of their budget.