A professor I work with, Brian Barsky, heads up the OPTICAL research project at UC Berkeley.
Their latest work, "RAYS (Render As You See) is a system for "vision-realistic rendering" which can simulate the vision of actual individuals. Vision-realistic rendering is particularly interesting in the context of laser refractive eye surgeries such as PRK and LASIK. Currently, almost a million Americans per year are choosing to undergo such elective surgeries. RAYS could convey to doctors the vision of a patient before and after surgery. In addition, RAYS could provide accurate and revealing visualizations of predicted acuity and simulated vision to potential candidates for such surgeries to facilitate educated decisions about the procedure. Still another application would be to show such candidates the possible visual anomalies that could arise from the surgery (such as glare at night)."
Homer: Hey! Hey! You're taking our grease! Man #1: It's our grease now. [he takes Homer's shovel and hits him over the head with it] Homer: Daahhh!! Man #2: We run the grease racket in this town. [they start to leave] Homer: Hey, that's my shovel! Man #1: We also run the shovel racket.
[the two men drive away in their truck labeled "Acne Grease and Shovel"]
those five gyroscopes are probably designed to have a fair amount of redundancy. I'm sure the people in charge have more sense than to design major components without backups.
they've probably also calculated the probability of enough gyroscopes failing in a year to place the station in jeopardy, and I'm betting it's a small number.
henrik wann jensen is developing some of the most usable algorithms for skin and other translucent materials. He gave a talk last month at Cal as a prospective faculty member. It was fairly impressive.
If i remember back to biology this is because there are lots of green (Natural) foods but not so many blue ones and we therefore have allocated more cones in our eyes to distinguishing greens than blues.
this is not entirely correct. We can't distinguish blue colored objects because our short wavelength cone receptor (commonly called the blue cone) has less sensitivity.
Pixar is a company that has many, many important people working for it. John Lasseter is a very skilled writer/director, but he'd just be another great writer if it weren't for the amazing scientists at Pixar.
People like Ed Catmull, Pat Hanrahan, Tom Duff, Loren Carpenter, Bill Reeves, Andy Witkin, Micheal Kass, David Baraff, Larry Gritz (and the rest) are what truly enable Pixar to make such visually compelling stories. Without Pixar providing a conducive atmosphere for their contributions to computer graphics from an academic pov, we'd be worse off.
There are amazing computer scientists at Pixar, and amazing people holding down the infrastructure. Can anyone imagine the throughput in their LAN during crunchtime?
All said and done, all these fancy algorithms and implementations would be useless without compelling stories and art. Pixar has amazing artists, nobody should overlook that.
Pixar and PDI are stalwarts of the commercial (read entertainment) computer graphics industry, and deservingly so, their contributions (in all forms) cannot be overlooked.
Many Applied Math majors have a focus in some other engineering discipline, and many choose cs. Not only do they have the math background, but the hacking skills you probably require. Remember, they can always learn new languages and put the problem in algorithm form if they've solved the problem.
kg
once, on campus, I saw a huge Sun server (E450?) being rolled across the street on a dolly truck. It had hard casters, and every bump in the asphalt made it jump just a little. I kept staring out of morbid curiousity. It almost hurt every time I saw that poor server bounce.
moral: never use casters with computers, especially expensive servers. It may not cause the computer damage, but it hurts people!
An easier explanation is that there is additive symmetry around 50. In other words, 49+51=2*50, as does 48+52...1+99. so 50 + 49*100 + 100 = 5050. Then again, I guess kids learning addition can't really multiply, but I'm sure Gauss could (this is the anecdote my discrete math gsi told us).
Color tv was an awesome hack: the fact that all the b&w televisions could handle the color signal was great. For those that don't know, the color signal was encoded YCC (Y-luminance, Cr and Cb for color) instead of RGB. This allowed the b&w tvs to use the luminance channel as a signal, and still allow the gamut needed for color. And you wonder why digital images (on a computer) and video don't go hand in hand...
HDTV is NTSC space is an even cooler hack, but how long are we going to keep doing this? Are we going to have holographic tv in 6 Mhz of bandwidth?!
Support new standards for HDTV! Progressive scan, high res, component i/o for devices, and the like. Let us move forward without the limitations of the past. We don't need no stinkin' backwards compatability.
rod/cone and nerve density both are very low outside the very center of the retina)
uh, no. Rod density is highest at the periphery of the retina. There, you will find very few cones. Similarly, you will find very few rods at the center of the retina.
look up any vision science or anatomy text to verify this.
this writer makes many mistakes early on about the anatomy and physiology of the retina/brain system. He/She doesn't not understand cones and rods, nor the pathways (superior colliculus or laterate geniculate nucleus). For that, the rest of his article is flawed (remember, false assumptions lead to false conclusions).
Indeed, the major falacy is that we live in an analog world. No we don't! We live in a quantum world, and light is quantized. That in itself should set up the rest of the system (retina/brain) to behave more like a digital system. This is why (partly) we percieve moderate flicker at the movies, 24 fps doens't cut it. Nor the 60Hz (30Hz really, taking into account the interlace). Flicker stops when some part of the retina/brain system is fully saturated. I don't know if there is such a point, our bodies seem to have very large bandwidth.
Just a side note, I can see flicker on my 21 inch monitor at 70 and 75 Hz. I can still make it out at 80Hz, and at 100Hz it seems solid. Thank god for my video card...
I've only seen a total of TWO calibration schemes that are worth more than a cup of warm piss. Those schemes are those of Apple Computer, and Silicon Graphics (big suprise, eh?).
actually, most professionals use Radius or Barco color calibrated (hardware) monitors. Radius is now defunct, but Barco is still kicking.
Last I checked Barco monitors were selling for between $4-7k. Well worth it is your print shop softproofs.
Both schemes use a colorimeter hooked up to the host in some way, then calibrated automagically. Quite acurate...
Einstein's brain was studied by Dr.Diamond (my friend took neuroanatomy from her a year ago, she's the most pleasant professor he's ever met), and a few others
The tax is applied to digital media. DAT tapes, Hi-8 tapes for Tascam recording equipment, Minidisc media and the like have a small tax added for the reason you give. It is not applied to analog media because the RIAA doesn't fear analog piracy, only digital.
trichromatic theory: this is what most people are familiar with, three types of cones sensitive to red green and blue. This is a little misinformed. There is only one "type" of cone, and different cones are receptive to different wavelengths (440, 530, and 560 nm are the peaks of sensitivity for the three types of *rhodopsin* in the cones).
opponent process theory: here we have the idea that receptors are formed in pairs (red/green, yellow/blue, black/white). This theory is supported by the anatomy in the retina (ganglion and bipolar cells) and in the lateral geniculate nucleus. Actually, this theory can be sufficiently modelled by neural networks and the anatomy. There are many experiments that support this theory.
dual process theory: this sort of combines the two above, and is the leading theory in vision science these days.
The point of all this is color vision is very hard to understand, and at the same time it's the one subject we know the most about regarding the brain and perception.
The previous post is incorrect in that the "red" cone is split into two bands. It is the "opponent" part of the ganglion and bipolar cell processing that gives us the duality between red and green.
there are two types of color blindness. there are people who are dichromats and there are monochromats. There are three types of dichromats, two that are red/green colorblind, and one that is blue/yellow. Monochromats perceive the world as degrees of lightness.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't get me wrong, I love Google for what it is, but not what it ain't: particularly tasteful or particularly elegant.
have you forgotten google search, which embodies elegant, simple, usable interface design? or gmail?
aoliza.
not the same thing, but worth mentioning.
for some really cool ``sound animation'' presented at SIGGRAPH this year, check out James O'Brien's research
this is not exactly what you're talking about, it's computationally generated sound from 3-d animation, which is much cooler...and harder.
muslim is not an ethnicity.
A professor I work with, Brian Barsky, heads up the OPTICAL research project at UC Berkeley.
Their latest work, "RAYS (Render As You See) is a system for "vision-realistic rendering" which can simulate the vision of actual individuals. Vision-realistic rendering is particularly interesting in the context of laser refractive eye surgeries such as PRK and LASIK. Currently, almost a million Americans per year are choosing to undergo such elective surgeries. RAYS could convey to doctors the vision of a patient before and after surgery. In addition, RAYS could provide accurate and revealing visualizations of predicted acuity and simulated vision to potential candidates for such surgeries to facilitate educated decisions about the procedure. Still another application would be to show such candidates the possible visual anomalies that could arise from the surgery (such as glare at night)."
Homer: Hey! Hey! You're taking our grease!
Man #1: It's our grease now. [he takes Homer's shovel and hits him over the head with it]
Homer: Daahhh!!
Man #2: We run the grease racket in this town. [they start to leave]
Homer: Hey, that's my shovel!
Man #1: We also run the shovel racket.
[the two men drive away in their truck labeled "Acne Grease and Shovel"]
those five gyroscopes are probably designed to have a fair amount of redundancy. I'm sure the people in charge have more sense than to design major components without backups.
they've probably also calculated the probability of enough gyroscopes failing in a year to place the station in jeopardy, and I'm betting it's a small number.
am I the only one who thought of insecticons as soon as I saw "fuel-eating bugs"?
henrik wann jensen is developing some of the most usable algorithms for skin and other translucent materials. He gave a talk last month at Cal as a prospective faculty member. It was fairly impressive.
his home page
rendering skin
rendering smoke
If i remember back to biology this is because there are lots of green (Natural) foods but not so many blue ones and we therefore have allocated more cones in our eyes to distinguishing greens than blues.
this is not entirely correct. We can't distinguish blue colored objects because our short wavelength cone receptor (commonly called the blue cone) has less sensitivity.
david baraff's & andy witkin's notes for physical simulation:
cmu or pixar
Pixar is a company that has many, many important people working for it. John Lasseter is a very skilled writer/director, but he'd just be another great writer if it weren't for the amazing scientists at Pixar.
People like Ed Catmull, Pat Hanrahan, Tom Duff, Loren Carpenter, Bill Reeves, Andy Witkin, Micheal Kass, David Baraff, Larry Gritz (and the rest) are what truly enable Pixar to make such visually compelling stories. Without Pixar providing a conducive atmosphere for their contributions to computer graphics from an academic pov, we'd be worse off.
There are amazing computer scientists at Pixar, and amazing people holding down the infrastructure. Can anyone imagine the throughput in their LAN during crunchtime?
All said and done, all these fancy algorithms and implementations would be useless without compelling stories and art. Pixar has amazing artists, nobody should overlook that.
Pixar and PDI are stalwarts of the commercial (read entertainment) computer graphics industry, and deservingly so, their contributions (in all forms) cannot be overlooked.
Kawaldeep
Many Applied Math majors have a focus in some other engineering discipline, and many choose cs. Not only do they have the math background, but the hacking skills you probably require. Remember, they can always learn new languages and put the problem in algorithm form if they've solved the problem. kg
once, on campus, I saw a huge Sun server (E450?) being rolled across the street on a dolly truck. It had hard casters, and every bump in the asphalt made it jump just a little. I kept staring out of morbid curiousity. It almost hurt every time I saw that poor server bounce.
moral: never use casters with computers, especially expensive servers. It may not cause the computer damage, but it hurts people!
An easier explanation is that there is additive symmetry around 50. In other words, 49+51=2*50, as does 48+52...1+99. so 50 + 49*100 + 100 = 5050. Then again, I guess kids learning addition can't really multiply, but I'm sure Gauss could (this is the anecdote my discrete math gsi told us).
for once, can we move forward?
Color tv was an awesome hack: the fact that all the b&w televisions could handle the color signal was great. For those that don't know, the color signal was encoded YCC (Y-luminance, Cr and Cb for color) instead of RGB. This allowed the b&w tvs to use the luminance channel as a signal, and still allow the gamut needed for color. And you wonder why digital images (on a computer) and video don't go hand in hand...
HDTV is NTSC space is an even cooler hack, but how long are we going to keep doing this? Are we going to have holographic tv in 6 Mhz of bandwidth?!
Support new standards for HDTV! Progressive scan, high res, component i/o for devices, and the like. Let us move forward without the limitations of the past. We don't need no stinkin' backwards compatability.
Kawaldeep
http://www.redmeat.com/redmeat/current/index.html
uh, no. Rod density is highest at the periphery of the retina. There, you will find very few cones. Similarly, you will find very few rods at the center of the retina.
look up any vision science or anatomy text to verify this.
Kawaldeep
oops! hit return...
anyway, I hope I'm not the only one who thought Brian Transeau was suing the electonica group prodigy over a hyperlink when I saw the headline...
<g>
Kawaldeep
Possible Crusoe and Recall?
you have to give him the benefit of the doubt here.
he could be talking about a logical AND bug.
Kawaldeep
Indeed, the major falacy is that we live in an analog world. No we don't! We live in a quantum world, and light is quantized. That in itself should set up the rest of the system (retina/brain) to behave more like a digital system. This is why (partly) we percieve moderate flicker at the movies, 24 fps doens't cut it. Nor the 60Hz (30Hz really, taking into account the interlace). Flicker stops when some part of the retina/brain system is fully saturated. I don't know if there is such a point, our bodies seem to have very large bandwidth.
Just a side note, I can see flicker on my 21 inch monitor at 70 and 75 Hz. I can still make it out at 80Hz, and at 100Hz it seems solid. Thank god for my video card...
Kawaldeep
actually, most professionals use Radius or Barco color calibrated (hardware) monitors. Radius is now defunct, but Barco is still kicking.
Last I checked Barco monitors were selling for between $4-7k. Well worth it is your print shop softproofs.
Both schemes use a colorimeter hooked up to the host in some way, then calibrated automagically. Quite acurate...
Kawaldeep
more info can be found here.
The tax is applied to digital media. DAT tapes, Hi-8 tapes for Tascam recording equipment, Minidisc media and the like have a small tax added for the reason you give. It is not applied to analog media because the RIAA doesn't fear analog piracy, only digital.
Kawaldeep
trichromatic theory: this is what most people are familiar with, three types of cones sensitive to red green and blue. This is a little misinformed. There is only one "type" of cone, and different cones are receptive to different wavelengths (440, 530, and 560 nm are the peaks of sensitivity for the three types of *rhodopsin* in the cones).
opponent process theory: here we have the idea that receptors are formed in pairs (red/green, yellow/blue, black/white). This theory is supported by the anatomy in the retina (ganglion and bipolar cells) and in the lateral geniculate nucleus. Actually, this theory can be sufficiently modelled by neural networks and the anatomy. There are many experiments that support this theory.
dual process theory: this sort of combines the two above, and is the leading theory in vision science these days.
The point of all this is color vision is very hard to understand, and at the same time it's the one subject we know the most about regarding the brain and perception.
The previous post is incorrect in that the "red" cone is split into two bands. It is the "opponent" part of the ganglion and bipolar cell processing that gives us the duality between red and green.
there are two types of color blindness. there are people who are dichromats and there are monochromats. There are three types of dichromats, two that are red/green colorblind, and one that is blue/yellow. Monochromats perceive the world as degrees of lightness.
Kawaldeep