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Synthetic Vision
oniony writes "Ars Technica has a link to a story on new goggles being developed for/by the military. The new device uses satellite imaging and land profiling to build a 3D representation of the world in a soldier's goggles in real-time. This would enable troops to see through sand storms and oil smoke of the kind currently hampering operations in the Gulf. I imagine one could also remove mountains to allow remote viewing of approaching territory."
This seems a bit ambitious. From what I understand the holdup in flying in the sandstorms is the fear of hitting electrical lines. Is this tech gonna provide a level of resolution that can show a powerline? No way.
A guide to the war's talking heads
tcd004
... the world is in for it..
from the wireframe-world dept:
(taken from a January 2002 SA.com article entitled, How you Know You're in the Future or something...)
Wireframe models. Everything in the future is represented by wireframe models on computers. Everything. If you're looking for a particular person, their face will appear as a wireframe model accompanied by 500-point flashing text displaying their name. If you're looking for a file, it will appear as a wireframe model of a folder. If you're looking for a wireframe model, it will appear as a wireframe model composed of really tiny wireframe models that make up each wire.
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
I imagine one could also remove mountains to allow remote viewing of approaching territory.
I imagine nerds removing walls to allow remote viewing of the girls locker-room.
"Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"
How is this different from adding a cheat mod to your FPS client? Transparent textures is one of the oldest tricks in the book. I think that the Geneva conventions need to be updated to prohibit this kind of thing. It just encourages campers.
Do these satellites actually detect small changes such as people and tanks?
Otherwise, why not just use a map and a laptop?
All this fancy tech stuff is great. But, if you watch the news right now, you'll see that this fancy schmancy stuff isn't terribly helpful when you are burried in a sand strom or up to your hips in mud and bullets are zinging every which way.
There's a time for tech. But, there are always going to be times when nothing will take the place of simple brute force.
Where's my sledge hammer?
Examples:
Driving through a snow storm at night in the middle of nowhere? Overlay location info, along with roadside markings in the goggles so you KNOW where the road is and not drive into a ditch.
Driving from New York to SF for the first time? Can't read a map? Have the goggles map it all out for you connections to GPS for real time roadside updates.
Part of this technology can be used in conjunction with speech-to-text software/hardware to overlay real-time closed captioning so that I know what the damn radio DJ's are saying on my morning commute. At least Satellite radio provides the song info.
These are just some of the possibilities that I can think off the top of my head.
-Cyc
/.'s 10 Millionth
and I'ts been worked on for the past 10 years by Steve Mann.
www.wearcam.org is a good place to start.
He is developing the cyper enhanced reality to specifically remove advertisments from the real world.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I think it gets its data directly from live feeds on satalites, not old pictures, the reason why you see old pictures when you go to the sattelite pictures that can be found online is because that is released technology, at this point we have halos of real time down looking satelites in space. My only problem with this, is that there is bound to be some lag, which in current VR systems, is known to cause sudden, horrible vomiting, because the feelings of Gs your feeling are not changing at the same pace your vision is getting new data.
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
The trouble with goggles, or anything that fills a large angle of view (e.g. IMAX) is that they're compelling and immersive in a way that smaller displays can't really match. Which is great for entertainment, but potentially very dangerous in situations where the augmented stuff is not 100% trustworthy and ought to be treated with some degree of healthy scepticism. Maybe the AR overlays could be drawn in luminous flamingo pink or something, just to make damn sure you didn't forget what was what.
I remember a driver in Germany a couple of years back who drove though a couple of barriers, past several yelling workmen and into a river. All because his in-car GPS navigation was telling him that there was a completed bridge there. And that was a just a teeny little display.
(Side note: "removing" mountains sounds like a truly horrible idea. I have vivid memories of playing the excellent flight sim EF2000 - this was back in the days of software rendering when depth-buffering was still something to be avoided. So the engine just drew the terrain first, and buildings afterward, because, hey, buildings are on top of terrain, right? Unfortunately this didn't cope with occlusion, and I lost count of the number of times I crashed into a bleedin' great hill while on a bee-line for an airfield that was clearly visible right in front of me...)
First, if you can't see where your fellow soldiers are, you're looking at a wireframe model of a world that you can't shoot into. How do you know where our guys are? This isn't a redundant post, because i need to add
Second, if you add GPS for all our folks into the picture, all the enemy needs to do is take one set of goggles and kaboom! there go our troops.
That said, i agree with the point that these are adding to the trivialisation of wartime 'kills' and the overlap of technology and wargames. But this has been coming for a long time, from way back in the world of 'duckhunt.' (which was pretty advanced itself, all things considered...) Hurt my spine in an accident one year, though, spent hours learnign to shoot those stupid ducks. Do i now look upon animated ducks with a dispassionate urge to blow them away? No. But that's not quite the same as human to human violence on the box. (PETA, leave me alone: it's NOT the same, and doesn't have the same effect. We can argue that one out when the US goes to war against waterfowl.)
So tell me: does anyone else think of the ad for the - what was it, navy seals, is army, that has the war game with the kids being beat to shreds by some mystery troup, and it turns out that it's real US forces playing the war game against them? Frankly, i think that the US forces are using this marketing tool badly- they are smudging that line just as far and as fast as they can. But sooner or later, the kids who sign up get to find out that it's not a game.
Realising that i've digressed from my original point: It's a catch-22. Put nobody else in the picture, all you have is a big sign saying 'you are here' on a digitised map. Good for sandstorms but won't tell you whether the guy hiding behind the wall up ahead is your buddy or your foe, and if you put in stuff that tells you this- you open the door for all those foes to know where your buddies are when they take you and your nifty goggles too. What's an army to do?
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.