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Guess that includes the Cambridge Dictionary, as well as all those fools at Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, HPE, IBM, Pixar, and most of the machine-learning industry, not to mention those well-known charlatan World Go champions at DeepMind.

I'm not sure what about the phrase terrifies you so much.

I've been a long-time panoramic and 3D photography enthusiast, and have gigabytes of data that could be fed straight into this software.

Shooting a 3D photograph is easy (just take two frames, correct issues in software later); shooting panoramas is easy (let the stitchers do their job); shooting a 3D panorama has always been too much work for me.

It's a pity I can't get my hands on any working code yet, and any commercial product is probably way off in the future.

Also, here's a link to their paper[PDF] for those interested. It's quite readable.

I remember seeing in Tokyo something like this.. exactly 20 years ago!
I see it is also the first reference in the Siggraph 2012 paper.
At that time it was IIRC using a Silicon Graphics graphical supercomputer.. 16-way at the time? I don't remember.
I was told that potted plants were wired to the computer so they became antenna and I remember it would work even without touching the plant. Some plants did better with different people. The right stroking would cause 3d graphics of plants built in real time using natural growth algorithms.
Christa and Laurent also were at NTT's ATR lab in Kyoto for some time and I think they got a patent on something.
Interactive Plant Growing an interactive computer installation.
The installation was beautiful and intriguing.
(c) 1992, Christa Sommerer & Laurent Mignonneau
in permanent collection of the ZKM Media Museum, Karlsruhe
http://www.interface.ufg.ac.at/christa-laurent/WORKS

It would be cool if you can actually address different parts of the plant that react differently to different frequencies, though this isn't shown in the paper really, I guess it is in the demo. I don't know about enjoying touching a cactus more than a fern though! IIRC pines worked well but I don't remember exactly. Anyway, if you use more robust plants they will last longer. It was very memorable and I have a feeling there is a future in it for therapy, not mapping gestures. Although if you could make a musical instrument from a vegetable with some silver ink and play it, that would be cool. Any takers?

You can look at the video here.

The motion-capture of the guy swinging from the monkey-bars looks somewhat realistic until you realize that his hands are swinging around in the rendering when they should be (and are) stationary on the actor.

Should be interesting when the technology matures, though.

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/427089main_cupola_full.jpg looks suspiciously like http://www.st-v-sw.net/images/Wars/Episodes/ANH/DVD4-weaponrange-002.jpg http://zurich.disneyresearch.com/~wjarosz/gallery/1996/images/xwing6.jpg Reality imitates art! ;)