Big Ben Brought Back To Life Through Snapchat AR Lens (gizmodo.co.uk)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: It's not a great time to visit the UK as a tourist. Besides all the Brexit nonsense and the December weather, one of our greatest tourist spots is under scaffolding and silent. Poor old Big Ben (and its Elizabeth Tower) are undergoing refurbishment at the moment, so there's not much to see if you want to snap a photo of the famous view. Snapchat's decided the way to fix this is with a Westminster-specific Snapchat Lens. When you activate the lens and point the Snap camera at the tower, the scaffolding peels back and Large Benjamin is there in all his glory again. Eitan Pilipski, VP of the Snap Camera Platform, said in a statement: "We are thrilled to unwrap Big Ben for our Snapchat community in London. This holiday, we wanted to showcase the imaginative power of Snap's Augmented Reality experiences by deconstructing the scaffolding around Big Ben -- at least for a few special moments. We believe that every great AR experience reveals new possibilities. Our goal was to bring together the most cutting edge mapping and imaging technologies to create the kind of unique, location-specific experience that only Snap -- and perhaps Father Christmas -- can deliver."
At least it solves a real problem. People want to see Big Ben for the very short period of time they are in London. Of course, by the time most people get to London Big Ben will be finished.
coz the Steelers' offense has been a dumpster fire for weeks now with his corpse playing qb.
"People want to see Big Ben for the very short period of time they are in London" - before it becomes Londongrad and they need travel papers to visit from Europe.
before it becomes Londongrad
Or the Elizabeth Tower is remodeled as a minaret and the bell is replaced with a muezzin.
Have gnu, will travel.
Considering that "Big Ben" is actually the name of one of the Elizabeth Tower Clock's components: the largest of its five bells. Since this is inside the tower, that filter gives your phone the power to see through limestone.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
But how would we know, as according to Foxy Friends that's a no-go-zone? It's far too dangerous to go to England now that Neil Degrasse Tyson converted to ISIS. (I assume, never actually been outside of west Texas)
Found the globalist.
It lets you experience being raped and murdered by a knife wielding religious fanatic in beautiful 4k.
It's not a great time to visit the UK as a tourist.
The exchange rate from is better right now for American tourists in UK than I can ever remember during my life. Likely due to Brexit I would imagine, £1 = $1.27 , which makes it a pretty great time to visit the UK as a tourist from the US.
They should fill the basement with gunpowder like a real religious fanatic.
Must be about half a year ago, about the time Apple and Google boasted "intelligent" (smartphone) camera algorithms, leading to photos much "bigger" than what the sensor was capable of.
In jest, I said at that time that you actually don't need the optical sensor. Just GPS and attitude, and Google should be able to find out how the scene ought to look like. OK, perhaps a bit of data fusion with some optical. because of lighting and some unexpected object (and to collect more data points for the next photograph), but that's it.
People looked at me with blank stares.
This is just as authentic:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=big+ben&t=lm&ia=images&iax=images
Whereas you let all of Slashdot experience your tawdry bigotry with the simple magic of the Interweb.
you have a chance to take an original picture, but no, you need to have one just like everybody else - and it's not even real!
might just as well take one in front of a green screen and photoshop the background.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
I finally visited England this past August, first time I've ever been out of North America (unless you include Jamaica), and I've been an anglophile for a long time. It was fantastic.
I had no idea however that the tower was going to be *totally* covered in scaffolding when I got there, so yeah, the disappointment is real.
Sure, you got the Tower, Tower bridge, the wibbly-wobbly bridge, St. Pauls, Trafalgar Square, and a number of other landmarks, but that is the one that really seems to say, "London", the rest of the Parliament buildings notwithstanding. And no, a snapchat filter won't cut it.
I can use that for another reason to go back in so many years though!
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.