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CMU Video Conference System Gets 3D From Cheap Webcams

Posted by timothy on from the little-bit-disorienting dept.

Hesham writes "Carnegie Mellon University's HCI Institute just released details on their "why-didn't-I-think-of-that-style" 3D video conferencing application. Considering how stale development has been in this field, this research seems like a nice solid step towards immersive telepresence. I was really disappointed with the "state-of-the-art" systems demoed at CES this year — they are all still just a flat, square, video stream. Hardly anything new. What is really cool about this project, is that researchers avoided building custom hardware no one is going to ever buy, and explored what could be done with just the generic webcams everyone already has. The result is a software-only solution, meaning all the big players (AIM, Skype, MSN, etc.) can release this as a simple software update. 'Enable 3D' checkbox anyone? YouTube video here. Behind the scenes, it relies on a clever illusory trick (motion parallax) and head-tracking (a la Johnny Lee's Wiimote stuff — same lab, HCII). It was just presented at IEEE International Symposium on Multimedia in December."

5 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. Re:2.5D, not 3D by MightyYar · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm with you - while my inner geek wants to give the developers credit and is impressed, the result is not something I'd want to actually use short of screwing around with it for a few minutes.

    Even if it were improved to the point where it was "perfect", it would still be just a cool trick and not a killer feature.

    --
    W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
  2. Re:Game control? by nomorecwrd · · Score: 2, Interesting

    5 years of applying Moore's law should have overcome this by now.
    Much better/clever implementation than for video conferencing.
    Come on... be honest, everyone has done that unconsciously on Counterstrike... even without a webcam ;-)

  3. Re:2.5D, not 3D by kramulous · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Or, just put the stream of the conferenced person just below/above and centred on the camera. I've operated Access Grid a couple of times and this is the first thing that I do.

    --
    .
  4. Bandwidth reduction? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I wonder if a more practical use would be to use the technique for video bandwidth reduction. If you know where the person is, you could concentrate video bandwidth on the face region, while keeping the rest of the "video" relatively static. No point in continuously compressing and sending boring background. Of course many codecs already do temporal compression that gives a similar effect, but this might increase the efficiency for video chat.

  5. I worked on that too. Look at these vids... by dinther · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Inspired by Johnny Lee's stuff, I pulled some old code out over a year ago and turned it into a decent engine that handles multiple screens and head tracking (TrackIR) to achieve the motion parallax effect. Like with all 3D effects, it needs to be seen but the following videos give you a good idea.

    Have a look at these demo videos and you can even download a demo:

    My first test
    http://nz.youtube.com/watch?v=X8PevTuEWlg

    More accurate tracking
    http://nz.youtube.com/watch?v=yf1hu6GLmf0

    Multi screen study
    http://nz.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBdtPz2V_vY

    Engine complete
    http://nz.youtube.com/watch?v=ku76aHq3pps
    Download Demo
    http://vandinther.googlepages.com/virtualwindow