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Mind-Blowing Interfaces On Display At SIGGRAPH 2009
An anonymous reader writes "Tech Review has a roundup of some cool, experimental new interfaces being shown at SIGGRAPH 2009, underway in New Orleans this week. They include an amazing 'touchable holograph' display, developed by a team in Japan, which uses an ultrasound device to simulate the sense of touch as the user grasps objects shown in 3D. The other ideas on display are Augmented Reality for Ordinary Toys, Hyper-Realistic Virtual Reality, 3D Teleconferencing and Scratchable Input Devices. If this is the future of computers, sign me up."
The conference has also seen the release of OpenGL 3.2 by the Khronos Group.
So, you can actually feel something when you touch the hologram?
3-D PORN.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
You take that back!
As we all should know from STNG, the 3d touchable hologram is probably the most dangerous entertainment system ever created. The doors never let you out, the holographic characters become sentient, the safety protocals NEVER work and it opens a rift up to places where holographic characters evolved naturally, so they promptly invade. STOP NOW BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I made it SIGGRAPH last year, but not this year. Its GEEK heaven. SIGGRAPH makes me aware how inadequate current video technology is. Do not be deceived by current large screen HD TVs - technology can do so much better.
In a nutshell, perfect video technology would be "indistinguishable from looking outside of a window on a sunny day". Thats what human visual systems are designed for. I've seen some experimental systems at SIGGRAPH that start to approach this quality. I hope it doesnt take 40 years to commercialize this like HDTV. I would love to see a theater movie where it felt like I was looking through a window at another world.
Resolution is probably the best aspect of current video. Beyond about 2,000 scan lines and 4K horizontal pixels, you reallly cant see more, unless it is a very large screen.
Contrast is perhaps in worst shape. The most impressive videos are those that have contrast ranges over a million, preferably over a billion. Super dark shadows and bright light source appear real then. The best monitors at Best Buy have contrast ranges in hundred thousands, but many are under a thousand. Different contrasts are very noticeable viewing screens side-by side. Sony has an experimental Organic-LED screen with a million contrast that starts to look realistic.
Current video only fills about half of the human perceptual color space. I've seen six-primary-color systems at SIGGRAPH that approach 80%-90% of the color space. They are very impressive when looking at nature and artwork. Compare a work of art and its best conventional video display and the color inadequacies will be immediately apparent.
Least is important is 3D in my opinion. It does make things look more real when you look through a window.
A big issue with enhanced video is that its not just the display device, but the whole video system. You need a camera, a signal representation, coomunication bandwidth, and recording devices that support all the enhanced features. You really cant shoe-horn it in existing systems.
Not to knock the hologram, but that looked too limited to be very promising. The augmented reality has a lot more promise, considering its only been a few years since we got Haar Cascades for object recognition, and we've already got real-time facial recognition. Screw laser tag, I'm waiting to fight alien baddies.
Imagine real life way-points for GPS navigation, or mid-air big screen TVs, or general awesome HUD display. A single pair of badass augmented reality glasses could replace all of your monitors (TV, computer, etc) it could give perfect directions (follow the magic glowing green line) virtual computer terminals (say, via an Airport network computer) floating text bubbles for deaf people, insta binoculars, glorified porn, etc.
"Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad." [Ecclesiastes 7:3]