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Kinect's Grandaddy Running On an Apple IIe In 1978
An anonymous reader writes "30 years before words like performance capture, augmented reality, or avatars were around — let alone commonplace — experimental film and video artist Tom DeWitt created a system that features aspects of all of them. Pantomation let users interact in real-time with a digital environment and props. It was built using Apple IIe's, analog video gear, and lots of custom hacking and patching. He's currently working on a holographic 3D system that's similarly ahead of its time."
I wonder how many patents shouldn't have been issued because of this prior art.
I seem to remember reading something about this in an old National Geographic picture book when I was like... 7. A slightly-overweight kid standing akimbo in front of an old Apple with a representation of him on the screen.
Man, we remember the weirdest, most random things sometimes...
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
Wow, something was running on an Apple product before it was on a Microsoft product before the iPhone existed?
I find it quite hard to believe that anything he does *now* on his trusty Apple IIe is ahead of it's time ;)
...or Tom DeWitt?
Apple IIe in 1978?! It was probably an Apple II (released in 1977). The Apple IIe wasn't released until 1983. See Timeline and History of the Apple II series
Is there an alternative link I can use? I want to read about these Apple computers and their interface.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
People were already talking about augmenting the human intellect 40 years ago....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augmentation_Research_Center
Reminds me of this other informative early computer related video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IgF6_jVaj8
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
The IIe wasn't released until 1983. It would have been the Apple II, which was still a cool little machine. (Ok, I've still got two of them in the shed...)
sudo mount --milk --sugar
Phantomation: Kinect, I am your Father.
Kinect: That's impossible!
Phantomation: Look into your source code, you know it to be true!
Kinect: Nooooooo!!!!!
I just can't resist boasting that I was selling a commercial product, "LIVE!", for the Amiga. A video input board, it was used at the Amiga launch.
Later a Canadian/Seattle company called VeryVivid wrote some very beautiful software for that board using the same principles as deWitt demonstrates. You could have birds fly to your hand, play virtual cymbals and drums, and may other effects.
If anybody can locate video of that, I'd love to see it again
Hi hope Microsoft is paying this guy for all his efforts...
PRIOR ART???
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
Reading his paper reveals that the hologram in use is an interference pattern taken from a live subject, then immediately read into the computer. It is not a 3DTV holo that floats in your living room for you to watch.
Still awesomely cool though. Why did evolution never invent this method to let human vision capture depth more directly?
I remember seeing some of this as part of an elementary school field trip in the late 70's. Maybe to the LA Museum of Modern Art? It was neat, and all, but I wasn't a fan of modern art - even back then.
When I clicked on the link my computer spontaneously rebooted. Apparently it's still ahead of my time too.
Acorn (of bbc micro fame) productised a comparable thing somewhere in the 90s. Worked pretty well too. Might see if you can revive it through riscos on a beagle board.
I wonder how many patents Mr. Dewitt's activity undermines!
I wonder if we can kill some patents with this?
Add this to the trivia since we are comparing old and new.... The developers of Amiga computers came up with their error code system -- Anyone remember Guru Meditation Errors? ------ from an internal game where people had to sit perfectly still on a pressure sensitive mat attached to development Amiga 1000's.
Infact this is positively patent invalidating.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
http://home.earthlink.net/~scan3d/
Adding comments has been disabled for this video.
Hallelujah. If only all Youtube uploaders were so benevolent.
hey - I originally posted this comment. And Tom DeWitt, now Ditto, happens to be my boss. Yes, you're right about the II/IIe distinction - h'es going get a kick out of that! What we're currently working on can be read about here: www.3dewitt.com
hey - you're right, it was a II, not at IIe. Like someone pointed out, it was originally developed on the PDP-8 and ported to the Apple II, but I think the significance of it is still pretty apparent. Re: the holographic stuff, that doesn't apply to Pantomation - it's much more current, and believe it or not, much more futuristic, too. I currently work with Tom, and you can check out what we're doing @ www.3dewitt.com
The mini-computer they talk about in this video is the PDP-8/L, not an Apple II, although the system was later ported to Apple II in the early 80s.
It's worth noting that the original Apple II (and most other microcomputers from the early 70s) would have been much more powerful, cheaper, and easier to program than the PDP-8, and the Apple II would have been an excellent choice for a project like this, due to its expandable and well-documented hardware architecture. However, I'm sure they started development of this system well before the original Apple II would have been well known or even available.
ENDUT! HOCH HECH!
Another early innovator in this area is Myron Krueger. His installation "videoplace" (1972-1990) was a lot like what Sony's Eyetoy would recreate later.
It was based around a colourful silhouetted video of the user (visually very similar to the iPod commercials). One of the many spectacular things it could do was what it could superimpose a little creature that tried to climb to the top of your head.
To see the climbing creature skip to 3:40 here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmmxVA5xhuo
They were using an early version of Apple's Time Machine application.
Kinect's grand-daddy? And Apple in the summary?
Hell, I don't need to go that far back in time to find similar systems - including identifying multiple similar-colored and shaped objects in three dimensions using multiple cameras. None of these are really similar to Kinect.
Not to take away from the guy's work (which is seriously cool), but the summary makes it sound as if Kinect is just a rip-off of a very old technology, and MS is again playing catch up with 20 year old stuff.
Heheh, I see PRIOR ART.
Bach says it all.
LOTS of things first saw the light of day on those old 8-bit machines:
- windows/mouse interfaces (Apple, Atari, Commodore)
First? Doug Englebart would like a word with you. And it's generally acknowledged that Xerox PARC (yes, the copier company) pioneered the modern GUI. The Star was a commercial failure because of its price, but it was a real product, and it had all that stuff first. Steve Jobs notoriously took a tour of PARC and borrowed ideas for their own GUIs from them.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
I’ve never read Slapdash, so thanks Scott Elofson for the heads up on this. “Anonymous” has got to be a former RPI student. This work was done from 1977-87 at the Video Synthesis and the Image Processing Labs. It started on a PDP-8L and migrated in 1983 to an Apple II. That made it portable, and it was shown in live demos all around like at SIGGRAPH (’86 & ’87) and at the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris (’83-’84). There are videos, so I’ll find and post some. More to come from me too, because in ’84 I started doing the 3D acquisition another way. That led to patents, NSF and NASA grants, and now a startup. TD
Optomystic