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Oblong's g-speak Brings "Minority Report" Interface To Life

Posted by timothy on from the staged-mock-up-or-real-time-control? dept.

tracheopterix writes "Oblong Industries, a startup based in LA has unveiled g-speak, an operational version of the notable interface from Minority Report. One of Oblong's founders served as science and technology adviser for the film; the interface was an extension of his doctoral work at the MIT Media Lab. Oblong calls g-speak a 'spatial operating environment' and adds that 'the SOE's combination of gestural i/o, recombinant networking, and real-world pixels brings the first major step in computer interface since 1984.'" The video shown on Oblong's front page is an impressive demo.

2 of 221 comments (clear)

  1. Not from Minority Report by Animats · · Score: 4, Informative

    Actually, that idea first appeared in film in Johnny Mnemonic.

    Autodesk put considerable effort into virtual reality in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The hope was that it would make it easier to design 3D objects. It didn't. The fundamental problem is that positioning your hands precisely in free space by eye, not touch, is slow and inaccurate. It looks really cool, but it's like trying to do precision work wearing mittens. Humans are much more precise when they have a surface to work against.

    It's not a technology problem.

  2. Re:Uh huh by zwei2stein · · Score: 4, Informative

    The g-speak platform is in use today at Fortune 50 companies, government agencies and universities. Application areas include:

            * Financial services
            * Telepresence
            * Network operations centers
            * Logistics and supply chain management
            * Military and intelligence
            * Automotive
            * Natural resource exploration
            * Data mining and analytics
            * Medical imaging
            * High-touch retail
            * Trade shows and theatrical presentations
            * Consumer electronics interfaces

    Oblong delivers room-sized and single-user g-speak environments as turnkey products.

    A software development kit that runs on both Linux and Mac OS X is available. Applications are source-compatible across both operating systems and can run on ordinary desktop and laptop computers in addition to gesturally-equipped g-speak machines and clusters.

    You were saying?

    --
    -- Technology for the sake of technology is as pathetic as eschewing technology because it's technology.