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"Virtual Bridge" Between London, Vienna Et Al.
dr.matrix writes "Read in Heise
(German) how Tholos Systems wants to create a huge outdoor 360 degree video conference between all european capitals, starting with London and Vienna." Pretty impressive technology, but the purpose is still a bit unclear.
Pretty impressive technology, but the purpose is still a bit unclear.
That's art! It doesn't have to serve a purpose, but still may be useful for somebody.
A monkey is doing the real work for me.
Read in Heise (German) how Tholos Systems wants to create a huge outdoor 360 degree video conference between all european capitals, starting with London and Vienna." Pretty impressive technology, but the purpose is still a bit unclear.
You're description doesn't help either. Is this a circular wall that will span from London to Vienna? What's the point of a 360 degree display if the opposite wall is hidden by the curvature of the earth.
The end is nigh.
So another application of wonderfull technology without any clear aim eh? Have no fear - some EU tech minister who couldn't tell the difference between a ZX-81 and a Pentium will pop up soon to tell us how "This will bring the nations of Europe together" Pffft :(
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Could stand in front of these bridges and sign to each other, sign languages being more mutually intelligible than spoken languages.
The problem with 360 degree screens is that I loose 180 degrees of information...
The first two cylinders are supposed to be installed in March of 2004. They plan to connect all European capitals by 2008. The plan is to have them feature views from other cylinders in the "best picture quality". Additionally people will be able to contact their counterparts at the other cylinder in "sound and picture"
The cylinders seem to cost about two million Euro a piece. They plan to earn money by selling advertising. The advertising will be limited to a maximum of 13% "airtime". Since they plan to be on air 24/7 that translates to 192 minutes of ads per day. They will sell advertising time to "exclusive content-partners" to "not endanger the THOLOS concept" and stop any "dilution" through additional programmes.
Inside the cylinder you will find eight HDTV-projectors, 22 microphones, 22 loudspeakers and three cameras. Networking is done via 100 MBit-Lines. To protect from vandalism the glass walls will be coated with a "special nano-structured anti-graffiti-protective-coating". And they want to hire security personnel to keep an eye on the expensive hardware around the clock.
Hank! White!
I thought we were meant to be nerds - since when did cool technology need a purpose? Build the huge outdoor 360 degree video conferencing system and we'll find a use for it.
Anyone for the biggest game of UT ever? (And don't even try to tell me nobody's going to try to use it for that...)
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
A run down of the technology (sparce as it is) is:
- 66m2, 360 panoramic digital screen
- 20 mega pixels - five times HDTV resolution
high resolution video projection
- built-in high-performance graphic system supporting text, video and 3-D visualization
- digital audio, featuring Hypersound(C),
a revolutionary directional sound technology
It sounds cute. It is meant to bolster "pan-European identity"linky
They have a similar thing here in Sydney in one of the tall buildings. When your going up your lift has a tv in it showing the person going down. Typically they will make rude signs at you and theres nothing you can do about it. There should be more of this. People take themselves far too seriously these days.
Anything with a nano-structured anti-gravity protection shield gets my seal of approval.
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
here: http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_830469.html?m enu=news.technology
It looks pretty cool, and pretty useless at the same time...
No, it is the GNU General Public License.
Yes, but can they watch "Friends" on it?
Remember how in all those crappy movies, the bad guy hacks into some big projector thiny to tell the leaders of the world of his evil plans? Now everyone can do it... even the script kiddies.... oh crap we'd better help secure it, otherwise some wiseass will broadcast "All your base are belong to us" over this system... heh, sounds fun...how long until this is implemented? sounds fun! sorry for the crappy post, i haven't slept in a ferw days, just finished a playable graphics test demo of my massive 3d game
"73% of quotes on the Internet are made up" -Ben Franklin
just use your imagination.. you can be in paris and be near the gateway cylinder and see people in london and wave to them and they can wave back. it's just a form of friendly communication. sure it doesn't make a ton of money, but it will be *fun*
"The purpose is unclear" :-)
who cares - it would be coool
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In Japan, at the Yokohama central train station there is a large cylindrical television about 2 meters in diameter. It's visually quite impressive and the colors are good. When you touch the glass you can feel the powerful hum of the revolving drum inside. From examining photographs of the outside of the cylinder taken at various exposure times, it appears it's made with approximately 24 groups of 3 vertical LED bars, one for each primary color.
These bars sweep by the viewer at great speed and 'paint' each pixel dozens of time per second. Similar to DLP projectors, each pixel is illuminated in turn by the different colors. When you look close on one pixel, you can see it's sort of fluctuating. What you're really looking at is a rapid progression of dozens of different colored LEDs flashing their light at you at the same physical point in space. The final result is a very smooth and stable image with a high refresh rate, great brightness and very rich LED colors.
I wonder if a technology similar to the one above will be used for these booths. Although a busy train station at a major earth quake zone could be considered a particularly hostile environment for a precision engineered rapidly rotating drum of considerable mass, I could easily imagine some european capitals constituting an even more hostile environment in terms of rampant vandalism.
The technology required to build these things are probably nothing much special, but I think it's a fun neat idea. Perhaps each drum will be switching between cities on regular posted hours and according to some kind of schedule so you can plan ahead to "meet" a friend from another city. These things should be placed by plazas and intersections with lots of pedestrians.
Another thing - just 3 cameras? That'll probably mean highly oblique angles for most of the people standing right next to the drum, which in turn might mean you don't get all that much out of 'meeting' someone. It would be something truly special if you could look directly at the virtual representation of someone standing right alongside the remote screen and they'd look right back at you.
As I see it, this is a free, virtual window into another city. Very nice for separated love couples in two different cities: "Let's meet at the cylinder" etc.. And funny for innocent passer-bys that can see wave and say "hi" to people from another city.
However, I think the most critical question is: will people be able to look into each other eyes like you would when you are looking trough a real-world window? Well the answer lies in the german article: "Im Inneren eines Zylinders sind sechs HDTV-Projektoren, 22 Mikrofone, 22 Lautsprecher und drei Kameras untergebracht" - "Inside the cylinder there are 6 hdtv projectors, 22 mics and 3 cameras". Only 3 cameras! How will it be possible for more than 3 people to look into their eyes then? Not at all, methinks...
I think not being able to look into each other's eyes through this virtual window will reduce the coolness factor of the cylinder to an overhyped TV/webcam combo...
Its like a key point in a spy novel... no one thought about this hunk of art lying around, until revolutionaries use it to orchestrate a massive simultaneous attack (or a bunch of artsy types use it for massive simultaneous silliness)
meh
Think of all the lost long-distance telephone revenues if you can just agree to meet your friend "at the wall' and talk all you want. I wonder if fights will break out over people who are wall hogs.
Of course, if the wall crowd is too noisy, then people will just get on their cellphones to talk to their wall-buddies. And with those cellphone cameras, you can take a picture of your remote friend on the wall who is taking a picture of you on the their wall and exchange pictures.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
What bothers me is that there is no sign of any technical specifications at all.
20 mega pixels - five times HDTV resolution
Sure, very nice if they were to show it on a screen as large as a 28" TV, but on a screen with an area of 66 m^2? 560 pixels/m? That doesn't sound very highres to me.
Lets calculate bandwidth. 20 Mpix = 20971520*24*3 = 1440 MB/s, uncompressed. That's a lot. Let's say they manage to compress the video 20 times, which could be difficult or expensive with real time compression. That leaves us with 72 MB/s video only over far distances, excluding sound. How are they going to get that through the 100 MBit network they mention in the article?
Also, I can find no references from google regarding "Hypersound(C), a revolutionary directional sound technology". If it was that revolutionary, someone would have written something about it, you might think.
I really don't know. It's a cool idea, but it sounds fishy. Is there a working prototype at all, or are they still in the attract-investor-money phase?
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The combined human population is enough to feed every living tiger for app. 28000 years.
Who said hackers were bad for buisiness?!
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
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Knowing my countrymen as well as I sadly do, I can't help but feel that while this is a very cool idea, it would soon be hijacked by the wrong elements.
Look, for example, at the reaction David Blaine got here for his "living in a box" stunt - heckled, taunted, and attacked by a man with golf balls. Personally I was massively entertained by this as Mr Blaine chose to put himself at the mercy of the English public - however, once a few BNP party members are out drunk and want the opportunity to abuse and insult some foreigners, they're going to make their way to the cylinder, where it'll be innocent Viennese passers-by who get the heckling.
Cool idea, but I can't help but feel it'll engender more international hostility than co-operation. Cynical, aren't I?
Of course it is not "20971520*24*3 = 1440 MB/s, uncompressed". It is 20971520*24 = 480 MB/s. 24 MB/s , compressed 20 times without audio. Still, a bit much for a 100 MBit network to handle.
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The combined human population is enough to feed every living tiger for app. 28000 years.
Yes, this is art. A modern form of art. Live art. It is not art like we find burried in the dirt that will survive years and years to come but everyday art. Even if it doesn't help countries get closer together politicly it will give common people (living in these large cities) a feeling of bond with these other cities. Even if you don't know anyone in the other city one can listen to people walking by and seeing faces you know are far away instantly. I for one think this could create a new sensation. Video conferencing is one thing, public video conferencing in this manner is a completely different thing, it is an everyday live art piece that surves the purpose of getting people to think of other things than their grey everyday.
oh, Vienna.
(I'll get my coat...)
Suck figs.
I, for one, welcome our new Ultravox overlords.
Ceterum censeo Microsoftem esse delendam
Babblefish English Translation
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Ah! Vienna.
All things in moderation; including moderation
... they hook up the worm holes.
I submitted this last week with a link to the Wired article that can be found here.
I think this is a wonderful concept because of the bad reputation that we Americans (and other countries as well) get because of our governments being essentially our "representatives" to the rest of the world. Also, distance plays a factor as well. I think that if we could have a "face-to-face" with the people from other countries, we could see that we are not all that different from each other. Certainly the language barriers still exist, but that can be overcome as well. I think this has a lot of possibilities.
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
for what it's worth ... sounds a bit like a PR release to me
Open air videoconferencing
Tholos Systems aim to build a virtual bridge between London and Vienna using "communication cylinders".
These cylinders, about 3m high and with a 7m diameter feature a 360 projection surface. On these, an "encompassing panorama
of the current scene" will be visible in highest picture quality, for one. On the other hand, people shall be able to instantaneously
interact personally with each other. The two prototypes in London and Vienna are scheduled to go online in May 2004. Until
2008, the operators want to weave a "virtual net" between all european capitals.
A single cylinder will cost about 2 million Euro. Tholos Systems plan to amortize these costs through advertising:
On the plan are a maximum of 13% commercial time, for a "broadcast time" of 24 hours. These 192 minutes will be offered as packages
to "exclusive content partners", so as to neither endanger the "concept of THOLOS" nor water down the message by additional programming.
Inside of the cylinders, there are six HDTV projectors, 22 microphones, 22 loudspeakers and three cameras. The colums shall be interconnected
using 100MBit lines. In order to protect against vandalism, the glass walls will be coated with a special nano-structured anti-graffiti layer.
Moreover, the operators want to hire a security service that will watch the expensive hardware around the clock. (wst/ct)
In Basel, Switzerland, pretty much what you describe has happened a few years ago.
A local TV station with only a few hours programming per day had put up a camera on the main square, and the images of people passing by were broadcast when there was no programming. The camera was about 2-3m up in the air, but resolution was fairly good.
For the first couple of months, you'd occasionally see people waving or grimacing to the camera. A few months later, they had to take it down, apparently because people in prison get that channel, too, on their TV, and organized crime used this one-way communication channel, by signaling in front of the camera...
This is not the publicity you are looking for.
This project is a rework of the infamous Hole in Space project, dating back to 1980.
This project consisted in linking together by audio and video two public spaces, without telling the passerby anything about the installation. At some point, bystanders would realize the link was bidirectional and started impromptu conversations between the two locations.
By a funny twist of things, this project inspired much of the 1980's and early 90's work carried at Xerox PARC and the University of Toronto Telepresence project.
These in turns nurtured a number of startups, such as PictureTel/Polycom, still a leader in videoconferencing technology.
Notice that by the time, the technology was fully analog, and for having used it in the early 90's, I can say the link quality was far better than most current IP-based videoconferencing is today.
If anyone is interested in setting up "video portals" between places like Internet cafes, wired coffee houses, art galleries, colleges, etc., go ahead and contact me.
Video projectors are easy, it is the audio that would be the biggest challenge. A combination of traditional sound reinforcement techniques (directional mics) and active de-echoing would be required to make it work well.
Set up a huge panel with DECSS clearly printed on it and aim it at the Washington DC cameras.
Seriously though I wonder though if they intend to do anything about nudity and obscenity. You know that there are going to be people flashing themselves and holding up big banners with obscenities, particularly anti-Bush stuff (assuming, god forbid, that he's re-elected).
One's a throw-back from a bygone age and the other was the successor to the ZX-80.
Why of cousre, they're plotting to kill us all. hehehe
-Tim Louden
now all the rulers of the nations can be easily contacted by Dr. Evil to tell them his plans of destroying the world
Hey we can really have some interesting public trials with this stuff. We could even do it just like in the beginning of Superman the Movie when Jor-El was trying those 3 criminals.
:-)
"The sentence is...death..death...death..(not that will happen in Europe mind you)"
sri
And I'm suggesting "Kumbaya-Vision" (TM)
No...thank you...No. Hold your applause. Greatness is its own reward.
.
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
Why whould they pick Vienna of all places?
grisha.org
Reminds me of the book where the Magic Dragon franchise had video columns in front of each one showing images from other franchises around the world.
I think it's a brilliant idea. It has little practical use apart from a sort of virtual meeting point, but I can see this becoming a huge hit. Normal people, who unlike us geeks, will not be worrying about bandwidth, bitdepth, framerates etc will love the idea.
The police in a good number of countries frown upon people getting naked, but that doesn't mean it won't happen. There is no reason to assume any action will be taken regarding flashing or people holding signs, as there is no more reason to censor someones ideas that are transmitted over the internet than there is to do so in real life.
Very nice for separated love couples in two different cities: "Let's meet at the cylinder" etc..
I can see how the pressures of long-distance relationships might give people ideas for novel uses of the technology. Maybe the security guards would turn a blind eye, but you'd need to watch out for those London winter temperatures.
GROGGS: alive and well and living in
This is the sort of thing that politicians love and will have their picture taken standing near it. It will attract large crowds for awhile. In three years it will sit idle due to budget cuts with a sign reading "Temporarily Out of Order"
Actually sounds like a good idea, i've seen big screens being wasted on much more pointless projects (namely that stupid coke sign that looks suspiciously like a giant flash application). I can imagine the fun drunk people will have at night with it ;) I dont know how its going to work or how much it will cost but it would be cool to walk into a square and have live screens all around europe/the world and it seems like the sort of thing that would bring people of countries together and make them less ignorent of eachother.
Im now very confused, its rare that we get actual cool uses of technology that dont involve selling something, screwing someone over or something that doesnt work?
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Or perhaps a martini lounge or something.
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This, or something very similar, has been in the works at the University of Toronto since last year.
An article about this can be found, and the McLuhan Center's current projects page has some more information.
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video conference between all european capitals, starting with London and Vienna
Vienna is a capital! I didn't know that!
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey