Miku's Fifth Birthday

Miku Hatsune was 'released' to the world on 31 August 2007, so when her fifth birthday fell during a festival in Yokohama it was decided to hold a short performance (mini-concert) using a new technique: a truly 3-dimensional projection into a huge water spray. It's not true holography, but is quite effective in the 3-D aspect.

Admission to the special bay-side 'audience zone' was by a lottery held within the main festival, for 2,000 people. I gather this was increased to 2,500 owing to the sheer level of demand (which tells us all something!) and they were treated to a three-song set plus an encore song. These were:

1. Weekender Girl
2. ODDS and ENDS
3. Time Machine
4. 39 (sankyu)

The Miku model for the occasion was a newly-designed one at the time, from the new Project Diva-f that is to be officially released next month. We didn't get as much of a benefit from this as might have been hoped, as the technology is still a long way from perfection. Despite it being dark, the image is not as bright as it might have been, and is also not quite sharp enough to cut it.

It's early days...

Because of the numbers in the audience, the projection was of a giant-size Miku, some ten metres tall, accompanied  by some interesting 3-D visual effects. You can see all this from the occasional side shots during the video; and here it is...