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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.
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...
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...
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.
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?
oh, Vienna.
(I'll get my coat...)
Suck figs.
I, for one, welcome our new Ultravox overlords.
Ceterum censeo Microsoftem esse delendam
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
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.
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).
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.
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