Making a Tardis bigger on the inside with mirrors, illusions or virtual reality?

[aki]

Hi, I'm having an 80% (the size is 80% of full size) Tardis made for two children aged six and nine. Does anyone have any ideas for ways to make the Tardis appear larger on the inside?

I had a few ideas to make it look bigger on the inside, what do you think of these? One idea was to make it with V-shaped mirrors like this one -  https://vimeo.com/82424553  But there are a few problems such as when someone walks in they will see many reflections of themselves. The other idea was having a mirror at the back and also small mirrors about a foot wide along the ground and on the side walls at the top to make the Tardis seem wider. The other idea was a backlit photograph of the real Tardis interior on the back and side walls. The photo would be stretched wider on the side walls so that when walking in it would appear to be a very similar angle to the back wall and therefore make the Tardis look wider. What do you think of these ideas?

Someone suggested lining the Tardis with green screen paint and using virtual reality goggles. What about this idea? I don't know enough about virtual reality, how could a Tardis interior could be made this way?

Thank you, Antony

[samiamuc]

Well, it's not exactly an illusion, but I've wanted to write this idea down for a while. If you had a lot of land (or at least an empty lot), you could build an underground tardis console room (and then, if you want, corridors and other rooms) and build a TARDIS to put on top of the ground. Then you have some sort of an elevator-like contraption so that when people step into the Police Box above ground, they get taken very quickly a few feet down so it looks like they just stepped into a box that is bigger on the inside, but really the "bigger" part is not inside but underground. I doubt this would be easy to do, though.

[russellsuthern]

You are right, that would be tricky.
Quite a few people have butted their TARDIS up to a shed or garage, then done a "Knock through".
They build a console room in the shed &, as the TARDIS does not have a back, when you walk in, It's like you are walking straight into a control room!
This is still a pretty time consuming job, but not as tricky, I feel, as the underground option.

Good luck, let us know what you decide to do.

Russell

[No More]

What I've always had on the mythical "when I have the time and skills" list is combining face tracking (from a discreet webcam and plenty of off-the-shelf stuff to locate a face using that and a Raspberry Pi) with an Unreal engine or similar with a virtual TARDIS interior scene, taking the viewpoint from the location of the face relative to the known position of the TARDIS open door as the person approaches and moves left/right/up/down.  (Technically you'd need two cameras, or a distance sensor using e.g. ultrasound or infra-red, so you can distinguish where along the line of sight the face is.). Then have a projector putting that onto a screen inside the police box.

Quite aside from all the technical hassles (and the annoying whine from the projector, and endless faff with correcting for trapezoid etc on the projection), it would only work for one person at a time.  (A point made nicely when a similar approach was used in "Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol".)  Probably more of a problem in reality would be the disconcerting lag between moving your head and the scene updating, though you'd get that with the VR goggles approach too.

[karsthotep]

  I think digging a hole in the ground for an underground console room and virtual reality seems a bit shall we say....ambitious?!, not to be a negative nelly but the simplest solution is as Russ said,  butt it up against some out building and build a console room or since its 80% have it in the house and be an entrance to the kids room and turn their entire room into a console room.  build a small console, add some christmas lights and do nothing levers and boom,  instant fun. When I was a kid I used to make power laser gauntlets with craft paper and crayons I think doing something simple would give just as much enjoyment to them.

[galacticprobe]

I think Karsten has the right idea with this. Also see my comments on the subject here: http://tardisbuilders.com/index.php?topic=7945.msg100854;topicseen#msg100854.

(And if I had the money, and the "real estate" to play with, I would put up one of those geodesic domes for the 9th/10th Doctor console rooms, and then have the TARDIS be the entry to it. But then if I was going to do that, I'd make the TARDIS full-size - the console, too - but put an extra "step up" to the console so the kids could reach the controls, and grow into it... at which time I'd remove that extra step.)

Dino.