Advertising has a habit of grabbing any available space where we look, and if train windows are available, I’ll bet it’s going to happen any time soon. No, I’d expect it would not happen on those beautiful Alpine railways… But on dreary subway trains, oh yes! Maybe a nice use would be to display passing Alpine scenery on a subway train?

LG Display has been supplying transparent OLED displays to transport companies in China and Japan since 2020, so we can already see it in action within a number of subway trains in major Chinese cities including Beijing, Shenzhen and Fuzhou, as well as within some of Japan’s overground trains. Seeing the transition between a mostly-transparent subway map and a more traditional screen displaying station layouts feels like we’re stepping ever closer to a world that was teased to us by Sci-Fi franchises like Star Trek.

The company suggests some useful applications for the tech, such as displaying maps, news, and weather forecasts on screen while transparent, thereby retaining its use as an actual window.

See https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/27/23374420/lg-oled-transparent-train-ads-subway-display

#technology #advertising #transparentOLED #trains

  • alyaza [they/she]M
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    2 years ago

    Advertising has a habit of grabbing any available space where we look, and if train windows are available, I’ll bet it’s going to happen any time soon. No, I’d expect it would not happen on those beautiful Alpine railways… But on dreary subway trains, oh yes! Maybe a nice use would be to display passing Alpine scenery on a subway train?

    i’m reminded of the ongoing, piecemeal adoption of advertising screens on glass doors in supermarkets, which is a particularly cynical and dystopian, egregious example of this. i fully expect similar to happen with train windows if an opportunity arises.