With this true 3D rendering of an object, you can zoom, focus, and more importantly pan around objects in the scene, in real time.
Er, if neither of the Kinect cameras is focused on the background, then it's going to be blurry no matter what.
Assuming we're talking about a recording, you'd be able to move the virtual camera, but you wouldn't be able to bring things into focus that were not in focus in the recording.
What this gives you is a 3D model, with an many textures mapped onto it as there are cameras.
The live action parts of Avatar would have been filmed using traditional stereoscopic techniques; two cameras imitating two eyes.
The CG elements would have been traditional CG; models created by a combination of artists and 3D scans.
The CG animation would have been motion capture as used by Peter Jackson and countless video games: multiple cameras tracking reflective points attached to an actor's body.
I'm not sure where we're disagreeing, unless it's a bit of linguistic crossed wiring.
We have enough food for everyone in the world; we have a real problem transporting food to the people who need it. It's a hard problem.
Likewise, there's enough sun/wind/etc. to provide all the energy we need. The existing technology to harvest that energy is mature enough to work. We have a real problem transporting that energy to the people who need it.
So you have to have an energy source which is capable of replacing fossil fuels first.
The only real problem with existing renewable energy sources is geographical and temporal availability. e.g. for wind, it's not always windy enough, and in some places it's never windy enough, making it a challenge to get a consistent power supply where it's needed.
For a CO2 -> material plant, it seems to be you could build it where the energy is, and run it at a variable rate, depending on what energy nature throws your way.
Next challenge, getting the CO2 in, and shipping the carbon products out. There are similar issues with water -> hydrogen plants.
You do know the whole reason The Beatles were so bloody popular at the time was because they were the first band to use "million dollar ad campaigns", right? they're the Ur Example of boy bands, for God's sake.
I disagree with this. The prototype for the modern boy band would be something from the 50s like The Platters -- all singers (they'd perform with a house band), external songwriters.
The Beatles broke the mould somewhat by being a commercial band who wrote their own songs.
Are you really saying that The Beates == Mozart == Radiohead? I like all three artists, but they aren't even in the same ballpark when it comes to the level of musicianship.
I agree they're unequal, but I have trouble guessing in which order you'd rank them, and I bet it's different from mine.
I don't know many boomers who have figured out how to rip their cds.
If they're buying off iTMS, then they must have iTunes.
If you can't figure out how to rip a CD in iTunes, you have a serious learning disability: insert CD, dialogue says "would you like to rip this CD", click "yes".
My mum -- a boomer -- has trouble using iTunes to manage an iPod (and in trying to explain it to her, I've realised how complicated Apple has made it). But she'd have no trouble ripping a CD.
I respect the mark that they left, but really, I hate their music. I have never understood how anyone would want to listen to them, let alone how they have become so earth-shatteringly popular.
Out of interest, what do you listen to?
The Beatles' style is so varied, it seems odd to me that you can't like *any* of it. I think it's easy to associate them with, say, I Wanna Hold Your Hand, and get an inoffensive moptop image in your head -- but that's completely unrepresentative of the material on Abbey Road.
I can think of few currently popular styles of music, that don't have some representation in the Beatles canon. Possibly the minimalist electronica that grew from Acid House, but not much else.
The Beatles, for the most part, did too. Well, they did if you weed McCartney's influence out of it, and focus mostly on the stuff created after some wonderful guy gave Lennon LSD.
Nah. It's a popular meme (like the also erroneous "Ringo was a crap drummer" meme), and McCartney's clean cut "thumbs up" persona throughout the 1980s did a lot to cement it. But it doesn't stand up to close examination.
McCartney was just as much of a "bad boy" as Lennon, both when whoring, drinking and doing speed in Hamburg, and when the whole band embraced pot and LSD later on. McCartney's virtuoso bass is fundamentally important to almost every song; of course he played other instruments, even the amazing drums on Dear Prudence (yeah, sorry, music geekery).
If you're really interested in who did what on The Beatles songs (and you don't have to be:) ) I can recommend the book "Revolution in the Head", which discusses each one chronologically as recorded.
It's also wrong to dismiss the influence of the other two. Any old drummer could *not* have replaced Ringo; Harrison's guitar was tremendous, and what few songs he wrote stand up well against Lennon+McCartney's best.
(Another fun book is "Living Life Without Loving The Beatles", with which used to have some sympathy)
There were no downloads then, and LPs are far superior to any lossily compressed music.
On a top end turntable perhaps, something which would have been punitively expensive in the 60s.
Most people listened to the early Beatles albums in mono, on cheap all-in-one turntable/amp combos. My parents still have those mono versions of the albums (because the early mono needles couldn't play stereo LPs). The speaker would have been small and tinny, and the amp would have distorted and coloured the signal.
Even growing up in the 80s, I had a stereo turntable/amp/FM radio unit in my bedroom; the turntable was powered by an AC motor, which imbued the audio with a constant 50Hz hum and was definitely inferior to an MP3.
Not to mention that most people didn't look after their records properly, so there would be scratches and crackle.
Indeed, the early stuff was mostly pop tripe played to earn the right to be more experimental later on. That doesn't make it bad per se, just not really demonstrative of their talent. Which is typical of the period. It wasn't until later that the music got good.
It's a common view -- churned out simple pop songs then went experiemental/creative with Sgt Pepper -- but it's not really true.
Their very early singles show a verve and tightness that can't be dismissed, the result of their relentless performing in Hamburg. Compared to the competition, *that* was enough to make people prick up their ears.
Then their early original songs often had little touches that marked them as out of the ordinary. Chord sequences, harmonies or rhythms that we're used to now, but were brand new at the time. Of course a lot of what they did was influenced by what was then known as R&B, but they definitely added their own twists in ways that nobody else was doing.
Yeah, it was a subtler experimentalism than that which later came about with Revolver and Pepper, but nonetheless, it was there.
I think there's some merit to the "you had to be there" point, which is that there's a ton of stuff in Beatles songs that was wildly innovative, that wouldn't raise an eyebrow now because it was immediately imitated by everyone else.
Even a simple pop song from their early period like, say, Please Please Me had chord changes that were novel at the time -- yet instantly pleasing and accessible to a mass audience -- but are now just part of the scenery.
And this is the extent of your musical knowledge, no wonder you like the Beatles.
I find their music uninteresting and the hype annoying.
I do play real guitar - among other instruments - and take pleasure in more complex forms than The Beatles, as well as in more minimal and direct music.
However I'll continue to defend Guitar Hero / Rock Band as a tool for music appreciation. It draws your attention to details of the parts that are easy to overlook. It's a good way to actually concentrate on music -- few people nowadays listen to music and give it their full attention.
I find it a bit strange that you could find the whole Beatles canon uninteresting. There's a hell of a lot of variety in there: She Loves You, Taxman, Eleanor Rigby, I am the Walrus, I Want You (She's So Heavy), Helter Skelter, I Got A Feeling... all very different from one another.
Slashdot Mirror
Mobi is a nonstandard format?
(Yeah, OK, lack of ePub puts me off Kindle too)
Unless you want to do extreme close ups, focus isn't much of an issue, as the depth-of-field of any webcam and things like Kinect is rather large.
I'll take your word for it.
You might expect shallow depth-of-field in low light conditions, since one easy way to get more light is to open the aperture wider.
Wouldn't polarized filters do the trick?
As someone in another thread points out, polarity is lost when light is scattered as it reflects (3D cinemas have special screens).
Also, polarizing gives you two channels. Bandwidth selection gives you many.
With this true 3D rendering of an object, you can zoom, focus, and more importantly pan around objects in the scene, in real time.
Er, if neither of the Kinect cameras is focused on the background, then it's going to be blurry no matter what.
Assuming we're talking about a recording, you'd be able to move the virtual camera, but you wouldn't be able to bring things into focus that were not in focus in the recording.
What this gives you is a 3D model, with an many textures mapped onto it as there are cameras.
Only for a very broad kind of "similar".
The live action parts of Avatar would have been filmed using traditional stereoscopic techniques; two cameras imitating two eyes.
The CG elements would have been traditional CG; models created by a combination of artists and 3D scans.
The CG animation would have been motion capture as used by Peter Jackson and countless video games: multiple cameras tracking reflective points attached to an actor's body.
Bloody 7 digit UID members are getting uppity.
Bless 'em.
I stopped caring about games when the arcade
graphics got "cartoony".
Funny, I kinda lost interest the more they strove for photorealism.
More Bomber Man, less Quake, please. The FPSs I can tolerate are Time Splitters and Team Fortress 2.
My favourite Xbox game ever is Space Giraffe; my current obsession is Pac-man CE DX.
You could have a feature length film in one cut without any waste. It would take a lot of skill to do it well -- from both the cast and the crew.
Hitchcock's "Rope".
OK, if you pay attention, there's a couple of joins, but that's purely because there was only so much film you could fit in a camera.
I'm not sure where we're disagreeing, unless it's a bit of linguistic crossed wiring.
We have enough food for everyone in the world; we have a real problem transporting food to the people who need it. It's a hard problem.
Likewise, there's enough sun/wind/etc. to provide all the energy we need. The existing technology to harvest that energy is mature enough to work. We have a real problem transporting that energy to the people who need it.
...There are similar issues with water -> hydrogen plants.
Except that almost all of the world's population lives near a body of water.
Yes, but for the water has to be close to a renewable energy source too.
Wind/Sun/etc + water = hydrogen + oxygen.
Hydrogen + oxygen = energy
You need the water near the renewable, and then you need to transport the hydrogen to where the energy is needed. i.e. where people are.
If the people are close to the renewable, you don't need to go through the hydrogen stage. Just let them use the energy directly.
I read somewhere that vinyl is described as warm because the crackling reminds people of a hearty open fire.
So you have to have an energy source which is capable of replacing fossil fuels first.
The only real problem with existing renewable energy sources is geographical and temporal availability. e.g. for wind, it's not always windy enough, and in some places it's never windy enough, making it a challenge to get a consistent power supply where it's needed.
For a CO2 -> material plant, it seems to be you could build it where the energy is, and run it at a variable rate, depending on what energy nature throws your way.
Next challenge, getting the CO2 in, and shipping the carbon products out. There are similar issues with water -> hydrogen plants.
You do know the whole reason The Beatles were so bloody popular at the time was because they were the first band to use "million dollar ad campaigns", right? they're the Ur Example of boy bands, for God's sake.
I disagree with this. The prototype for the modern boy band would be something from the 50s like The Platters -- all singers (they'd perform with a house band), external songwriters.
The Beatles broke the mould somewhat by being a commercial band who wrote their own songs.
Your comparisons make my head explode.
Are you really saying that The Beates == Mozart == Radiohead? I like all three artists, but they aren't even in the same ballpark when it comes to the level of musicianship.
I agree they're unequal, but I have trouble guessing in which order you'd rank them, and I bet it's different from mine.
Which is telling, right?
I don't know many boomers who have figured out how to rip their cds.
If they're buying off iTMS, then they must have iTunes.
If you can't figure out how to rip a CD in iTunes, you have a serious learning disability: insert CD, dialogue says "would you like to rip this CD", click "yes".
My mum -- a boomer -- has trouble using iTunes to manage an iPod (and in trying to explain it to her, I've realised how complicated Apple has made it). But she'd have no trouble ripping a CD.
I respect the mark that they left, but really, I hate their music. I have never understood how anyone would want to listen to them, let alone how they have become so earth-shatteringly popular.
Out of interest, what do you listen to?
The Beatles' style is so varied, it seems odd to me that you can't like *any* of it. I think it's easy to associate them with, say, I Wanna Hold Your Hand, and get an inoffensive moptop image in your head -- but that's completely unrepresentative of the material on Abbey Road.
I can think of few currently popular styles of music, that don't have some representation in the Beatles canon. Possibly the minimalist electronica that grew from Acid House, but not much else.
Ah, trying to appreciate classic albums. Onward! To "Trout Mask Replica"!
(My recommendation is not do do this: although a Beefheart best-of album is probably worth sampling)
The Beatles, for the most part, did too. Well, they did if you weed McCartney's influence out of it, and focus mostly on the stuff created after some wonderful guy gave Lennon LSD.
Nah. It's a popular meme (like the also erroneous "Ringo was a crap drummer" meme), and McCartney's clean cut "thumbs up" persona throughout the 1980s did a lot to cement it. But it doesn't stand up to close examination.
McCartney was just as much of a "bad boy" as Lennon, both when whoring, drinking and doing speed in Hamburg, and when the whole band embraced pot and LSD later on. McCartney's virtuoso bass is fundamentally important to almost every song; of course he played other instruments, even the amazing drums on Dear Prudence (yeah, sorry, music geekery).
If you're really interested in who did what on The Beatles songs (and you don't have to be :) ) I can recommend the book "Revolution in the Head", which discusses each one chronologically as recorded.
It's also wrong to dismiss the influence of the other two. Any old drummer could *not* have replaced Ringo; Harrison's guitar was tremendous, and what few songs he wrote stand up well against Lennon+McCartney's best.
(Another fun book is "Living Life Without Loving The Beatles", with which used to have some sympathy)
There were no downloads then, and LPs are far superior to any lossily compressed music.
On a top end turntable perhaps, something which would have been punitively expensive in the 60s.
Most people listened to the early Beatles albums in mono, on cheap all-in-one turntable/amp combos. My parents still have those mono versions of the albums (because the early mono needles couldn't play stereo LPs). The speaker would have been small and tinny, and the amp would have distorted and coloured the signal.
Even growing up in the 80s, I had a stereo turntable/amp/FM radio unit in my bedroom; the turntable was powered by an AC motor, which imbued the audio with a constant 50Hz hum and was definitely inferior to an MP3.
Not to mention that most people didn't look after their records properly, so there would be scratches and crackle.
Indeed, the early stuff was mostly pop tripe played to earn the right to be more experimental later on. That doesn't make it bad per se, just not really demonstrative of their talent. Which is typical of the period. It wasn't until later that the music got good.
It's a common view -- churned out simple pop songs then went experiemental/creative with Sgt Pepper -- but it's not really true.
Their very early singles show a verve and tightness that can't be dismissed, the result of their relentless performing in Hamburg. Compared to the competition, *that* was enough to make people prick up their ears.
Then their early original songs often had little touches that marked them as out of the ordinary. Chord sequences, harmonies or rhythms that we're used to now, but were brand new at the time. Of course a lot of what they did was influenced by what was then known as R&B, but they definitely added their own twists in ways that nobody else was doing.
Yeah, it was a subtler experimentalism than that which later came about with Revolver and Pepper, but nonetheless, it was there.
Come on, Beatles vs Stones?
The debate has raged for 40 years. They influenced *each other*. Let's just call it a draw?
I think there's some merit to the "you had to be there" point, which is that there's a ton of stuff in Beatles songs that was wildly innovative, that wouldn't raise an eyebrow now because it was immediately imitated by everyone else.
Even a simple pop song from their early period like, say, Please Please Me had chord changes that were novel at the time -- yet instantly pleasing and accessible to a mass audience -- but are now just part of the scenery.
A few hours with Beatles Rock Band
And this is the extent of your musical knowledge, no wonder you like the Beatles.
I find their music uninteresting and the hype annoying.
I do play real guitar - among other instruments - and take pleasure in more complex forms than The Beatles, as well as in more minimal and direct music.
However I'll continue to defend Guitar Hero / Rock Band as a tool for music appreciation. It draws your attention to details of the parts that are easy to overlook. It's a good way to actually concentrate on music -- few people nowadays listen to music and give it their full attention.
I find it a bit strange that you could find the whole Beatles canon uninteresting. There's a hell of a lot of variety in there: She Loves You, Taxman, Eleanor Rigby, I am the Walrus, I Want You (She's So Heavy), Helter Skelter, I Got A Feeling ... all very different from one another.
Twas a piece of historical trivia.
And the Sosumi anecdote is funny, whereas the iTunes bit is not.
Meh. The Beatles are overrated.
I tend to agree, but only because they are so very, very, unquestioningly highly rated by so many.
It's also easy to dismiss them, as an overreaction to the adulation. Your post underrates them.
A few hours with Beatles Rock Band (which is a great motivator for attentive listening) will remind you that they *were* very good indeed.