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3D Videoconferencing Over Internet2
An Anonymous Coward sent in: "Dallas Morning News reports that the Governor of Texas beamed in via "teleportation" through the Internet 2 to a group of business leaders in Richardson, while he was in Austin, Texas. Amazing.. This seems so star trek as opposed to reality. His 3d image stood before the business leaders in demonstration of the new technology by Teleportec." Apparently the company is calling this "teleportation", which seems like a misnomer to me, but it's still neat.
Condider the porn industry and its effect on the Internet in general. It's seedy, sure. It's ammo in the guns of overzealous censors, that's a given. And it plagues Slashdot (goatse.cx, anybody?).
0 /10/12/nyou/cover.shtml), Mr. Grayson says: "Of course, 'Web design' in the mid-'90s meant, in large part, adult entertainment - that's where the money was." SearchExtreme is now the most popular pornography film search engine on the 'Net.
:-).
But it has also been one of the biggest driving forces in e-commerce and web development. In an article by Adam Grayson of SearchExtreme.com (available, http://www.dailynorthwestern.com/daily/issues/200
Take a look at the field of adult entertainment in general, as well-- most companies will tell you that a LARGE proportion of orders for videos, toys, and other goodies (body oils, etc.) come from the Internet. And that isn't just a recent development, either-- online smut dealers were some of the earliest adopters of e-commerce technologies.
As much as we may not like the idea, the Internet is the IDEAL form of pornography distribution. It's relatively anonymous (save DoubleClick-style tracking and such), it's convenient, and the selection is ENORMOUS (especially in the niche market-- weird kinks FLOURISH online).
As I mentioned above, porn dealers were amongst the earliest adopters of e-commerce technologies. But that's not the only tech that they embraced. Streaming video is another example. And porn sites have long had "discussion" areas, personal ads, and private chat rooms. Now, take a look at where auctions are showing up...
I guess that what I'm trying to say is that, whether we like it or not, when this thing makes it into the home, it's going to become a porn machine for a lot of people. And the porn companies are going to comprise a LOT of business for the company producing these machines-- at least, early on. Later, it will be all about giving kiddies a holographic picture of the rainforest
So don't just write it off as a joke-- this company may have porno distributors to thank for its continued survival a few years down the road...
Ask, and you shall receive: CAVE Quake II. Of course, it helps if you have the CAVE to play in. I've gotta see if we can try this at work. ;-)
How it'll work on the Internet1 won't really be known, but I doubt it matters. This kind of data will probably be sent via private corporate VPNs anyways.
Besides, seeing the person you're talking to is very important. If you're in business, you want to be personal when you negotiate, instead of memo or phonecall. Eye to eye communication is very important. Not even to mention the sentimental reason.. Parents will love the ability to look for themselves to see if their 18 year old college freshman has been eating enough.
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Someone else called it Holoportation. I like the term but until they can get costs down its just a fun toy. This, however, has the potential of eliminating the need for business leaders to shuttle off to another city for a one day one shot meeting. This is one of the few neato toys that I have seen lately that has real true business potential.
ACK
Since no one has posted it yet....this could be useful.
http://www.teleportec.com/
They've got flash and nonflash versions...Let's hope they can handle being Slashdotted!
-Julius X
-Julius X
remove "-whatkindofspamdoyoutakemefor-" from email to send
Now, having a 3D hologram at that size would be pretty cool. Actually, it would also be cool to just do that without I2, with the guy standing in the room. Think of it - you go to see your favorite band or any speaker and it's a huge crowd. So, a 200 foot tall hologram is created above the guy and everyone watches that. That'd be sweet.
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Vidi, Vici, Veni
True, but as we aren't about to get teleportation any time soon, and have good reason to believe that we never will have it, it's not like there's going to be a naming conflict in the future. This is as close to "teleportation" we'll be getting anytime in the next 30 years. (I wanted to say 50 but I'm not that brave.)
Perhaps not equivalent to Bell, but adding a pretty picture can make a lot of difference. Witness the difference between radio and television.
FWIW, I'd call this tech 'teleportration'. Holoportation combines all the wrong roots and would translate to 'total move' instead of 'across image'
Kevin Fox
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Kevin Fox
I am so entirely sick of this extreme chest-puffing and disrespect of actual culture-changing inventions. No, 3D video conferencing is not even close to the advent of the telephone. Acquire and apply some humility.
The telephone gave for the first time real-time two-way communication. 3D video conferencing adds nothing to that essence except a pretty picture. It's still real-time, and it's still communication. Being able to see the other party's postures and gestures is only a marginal improvement, not an earth-shattering achievement.
Growl.
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CAIMLAS
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
to be more precise. But it would be better if you had a way to touch stuff, but one thing at a time :)
How we know is more important than what we know.
We need holodecks and totally virtual offices.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Being able to buy one in a store near me? What's the transmitting end of these things look like?
How we know is more important than what we know.
when china takes over the world you're gunna be wishing you'd built yourself a teleportation machine damn it.
How we know is more important than what we know.
With a transparent camera in the middle of it? or with some funky lenses behind it to point the thing down at a camera? There are _no_ details, and they want massive amounts of money for it. Can you say "shooting fish".
How we know is more important than what we know.
...was for educational and research sites only, like the Internet used to be in the good old days.
A business helping a politician to show off to a bunch of other businesses at a business meeting doesn't sound like research or education. Has Internet II sold out already?
If in fact this wasn't over Internet II, please correct me (and the /. article).
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
And how!
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Genius dies of the same blow that destroys liberty.
A better term is "telepresence", not "teleportation".
--LP
They're calling it teleportation. They're linking it to Star Trek. Oh no, not more William Shatner Ads.
missing the point... the idea is that it's better in some circumstances to zoom over at the speed of I2, and get back home as soon as the visit's over. picture going to a friend in australia, then going for a quick visit to your cousins in Greece, then making a five way business call, then checking out some paintings in the Louvre, then taking a shower and having breakfast at your place.
and of course the $70k pricetag will diminish, as with any new technology, so no need to get upset!
what you pay for a cable or dsl internet hook-up, would pay for a TON of postage, but there are still reasons for getting a net connection.
Fuck it
This is a moot point, however, because we Ninja have never had problems with transportation. We can climb trees, summon magical dragons, and when all else fails, obtain first-class plane tickets by threatening the counter-girls with our forboding Ninja garb and deadly-keen ninja-to.
This is not to imply that Ninjas never have a use for real teleportation... I would refer anyone who disputes this to Ninja Gaiden 2, in which I believe the Art of Teleportation is demonstrated quite clearly, along with the Art of Magic Shuriken and the Art of Flaming Balls of Death.
However, teleportation is an art which Ninja rarely bother with, because of the intense mathematical calulations involved to avoid teleporting into walls, the ground, the moon, or dog feces. (I'll tell you, it sure is embarassing to use your mystical Ninja powers of teleportation, only to discover that you are standing in dog feces! You must return to the dojo in shame, and endure the jibes of your Ninja brethen, which are as sharp as the shuriken! "Hey, brother Ninja! Is it me, or do I smell the odor of dog feces! Oh! It is you, who has stepped in dog feces! Ha! ha!" Oh, it is so frustrating!)
At this point, you may be wondering what the preferred method of Ninja transportation is. Well, I'll tell you. It is, obviously, the Kawasaki Ninja.
But whatever method of transportations used, a Ninja will not rest until he has completed his mission. The Ninja's mission is simple: to obtain and enjoy as many delicious pancakes as possible. Pancakes covered with syrup and sometimes blueberries are the soul of the Ninja clan and must be obtained and enjoyed at any cost, lest the ancestors set upon us with their firey ancestral wrath. Yes, we shall obtain and enjoy all pancakes that exist, and only then, when all pancakes have been obtained and enjoyed, shall we rest.
Rest? Did I say rest? I meant commit seppuku.
Arigatou gozaimasu,
The_Ninja_Messenger
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I like to watch.
Should I dare mention the pornographic uses of this thing? I mean, people enjoy looking at 2D pictures and go nuts over 2D movies, I can hardly imagine what sort of response a 3D image of a person will recieve.
.sdrawkcab si gis siht
According to the article, this technology's intimate relationship with Internet2 comes mostly from the fact that there were very few applications around which NEEDED Internet2's impressive network stats to actually run. Consequently, the peeps at I2 contacted Jaron to lead up the project. And ... well, you can read about it here.
Additionally there's some other teleimmersion sites at UNC and at Jaron's research site.
Jaron Lanier's thing is something else entirely, a way to capture a 3D scene and send it out for rendering as a stereo image. That's much more elaborate.
There are three cues you have to get right to produce a convincing depth illusion: depth of focus, relative motion when the viewer's head moves, and binocular stereo. Binocular stereo is in fact the least important of these. And it's really annoying when the cues disagree, which is why looking at stereo images on a monitor using shutter glasses is uncomfortable.
A display focused at infinity satisfies the depth of focus and relative motion requirement if everything in the field of view is more than a few meters away. Such displays are used in flight simulators. They're simple, but have big glass parts.
It's also possible to get all three cues almost right for a nearby image of a small object that doesn't present too much range in depth, by using a spherical mirror to project a flat image. Two Sega videodisc games (one called "Hologram Time Traveller", although it does not use a hologram internally) from the late 1980s used such technology.
The podium thing is probably using some variation on these optical schemes.
Did anybody notice that it looks a lot like the interocitor from This Island Earth?
This may be expensive as hell, but all it does is proof of concept. Others will follow and when that happens it will become more 'normal' and more readily available to the common man and the common corporation.
Wonderful start, I wish they would look up the word teleportation, though.
DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
UNIX - Not just for Vestal Virgins anymore
Frankly, this is a bit too much out of the blue until there's a bit of proof to go with it.
Huh? They did it. What more proof do you need?
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I've read the whole thing and i still can't figure out if this actually records 3d images, and if so, how does it do it?
When it says you can have eye contact, does it mean that the person being "teleported" (at least you know they have a marketing department) will also receive an image of the room he's being teleported to? if not, this isn't eye contact any more than staring at a monalisa painting is...
So, if this is what it sounds like, and what they have is a 3d recorder and a 3d proyector (they claim 40" by 30") on each end, then a $70,000.00 price tag is a bargain I think. I can even see how it could pay for itself at that price. Just imagine how much it costs a company to have bi-monthly meetings with executives, say, from their Japan branch. Not just the plane ticket, but hotel costs, the 3 wasted days traveling, etc. Most likely they just wouldn't have those meetings, so this product opens up new possibilities...
Now if you ask me how I would have done it, well, I'd stick with glasses that project images into your eyes. You can record the whole scene with several traditional cameras on both ends, have the computer generate a 3d model of both places (this can be done pretty easily already) and have them transmitted to their destination, where people are wearing glasses that project the "teleported" person in a fixed area somewhere in front of you, and have the image stay there even if you move your head. All of this has been done already but not with this application
There are two kinds of people in the world: Those with good memory.
Not to mention the chief surgeon saying 'dammit Jim I'm a doctor. not a wooly-bearded Unix guru'.
All this does is project the image of someons upper body to a 40" by 30" flat clear screen. Just a tinsey tiny step above webcams if you ask me.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
but think about the p0rn!!
SCORE!!
Check this month's Scientific American for more information on the technology involved, or read here. There's also some links from the article to various sites relating to telepresence. Enjoy!
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www.stallman.org is running Apache/1.3.6 (Unix) on FreeBSD
Cheers, quokka
I hate to be a wet blanket, but hasn't anyone noticed that we don't even have 2D video phones in any kind of penetration? Sure, they exist, but they are hardly ubiquitous even in business situations.
Given that 2D has pretty much failed for a variety of reasons, what makes anyone think that 3D is going to suddenly become a "must have" item that will drive down the cost?
In short, all the same claims have been made for video phones for 30 years (2001: A Space Odyssey, anyone?). None of them have come true. I think there are two primary reasons: 1) the advantages of seeing the person are not all that much compared to the added bandwidth cost (at least 100-1000 times voice bandwidth), and 2) I think most people don't *want* to be seen over the phone. Think about how much more trouble you have to take in your appearance when you go to a customer's site versus just going into the office (well, maybe not you, Mr. Geek, but think about the rest of the world). It's a lot more effort to have to dress up all the time for phone meetings with clients.
I predict this is one of those cases where it's "the technology of the future, and always will be".
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Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I guess it's kinda cool...but not THAT cool. It is the margarine of cool.
Good lord, all sorts of off-topic questions come to mind...
What happens if this guy broadcast the image all over the place? What happened if they substituted a dramatic presentation for a speech? Could you get the Battle for Naboo in your living room?
This is weird. One of the things George Clooney said as an actor made the big difference between film acting and tv acting was that on tv, the audience feels bigger than the people they're watching. What would happen if it suddenly got put into 3d and you've got two-foot tall Hollywood stars running around? Will this be the end of flat-screen presentations period?
Will this sort of thing eventually replace computer monitors for things like games? It sure would make the 3D a lot more realistic looking, although maybe only in closed-boundary areas...
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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Ugh. This is going to take those annoying goatse.cx posts to a whole new level . . .
What advantage is there to using videoconfrancing, as opposed to a telephone and a desktop sharing system of some kind? I mean, hell, email some PowerPoint slides if you want to, then call somebody on a phone. What's the point to videoconferencing, anyway? Seriously. Is there something I'm missing?
The basic gist of it was that the President of the United States beamed himself holographically to the houses of all Americans to eat dinner with all the families. It also involved some AI that was a clone of the President's personality so each family could interact with him differently. And then their conversations were later data-mined to try and get an accurate view of how the people felt about the direction the country was moving in.
Unfortunately, I can't remember the name of the story or the author :( Anyone? Anyone?
1) swirly sparkly doo-dads flash around the area where the subject is standing
and
2) a low-pitched fluctuating tone sounds from a the lights above and beneath them.
* A fat Scotsman is also key to the process, for one reason or another.
Internet1 could do this too--if we only had 3 sites connected, like Internet2 does. Quit telling me how great it is and let me on.
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324006
If you think PHONE sex was popular...
The One,
The Only,
--The Kid
the liberator who destroyed my property has realigned my perception
www.quantumheresy.com
It's neat, but at $70,000 a shot, that would pay for an awful lot of plane tickets for the guy to be actually there (as opposed to virtually there).
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.