A few years ago I went to Las Vegas and stay at Luxor hotel. I found out that the hotel has an iMax theater, so a friend and I thought we'd stand in line for about an hour to see "Mario Andretti's Super Speedway". (http://www.audio-ideas.com/reviews/dvd/super-spee dway.html) It had been my first time in an iMax so the thrill was out of this world. So, large, so close, great sound, etc., but there was one thing seriously missing and think this lens technology is the closest thing to fix the problem.
The problem is that when a camera focused on a subject, observers were forced to look at it and lot allowing a single observer to enjoy viewing other parts of the video. For example, Andretti was cruising down a long country road and the camera position was about 100 yards away at low altitude. The car and Mario were the subject; however, the scenery beyond the road appeared beautiful, but out of focus.
Here are two scenarios of usage:
1) Using the statue pictures on wired, imagine that you are looking at the far statue. Light-weight Eye-tracking glasses could track the x/y coordinates and quickly adjust the "z" focus my switching the image (on the video end, not the obsrever's glasses). When your eyes move to the right to the near statue, the software switches to that image. Very simple actually, but, this idea is only good for one observer. Think of the virtual reality possibilities!
2) Now back to Mario's scenario and the most expensive (I would think) solution. The observer is a "lens shifter" if you will. Essentially, the image the observer is seeing is either all out of focus to serve as a "common focus" or just focused on the subject. (I think all out of focus will work better.) A headset is worn by the observer containing thousands, if not millions, of small lenses and eye tracking capabilities. Auto-magically, the lenses adjust x/y viewpoints of the eye.
Perhaps we've been thinking too much about putting TVs on our heads rather than lenses and using a commonly-focused scene as a base. Kudos to Ng, this is the beginning of a great era in photography and movie making.
As VP of SEG America (www.segamerica.org) and long-time owner of a Segway HT, I can say that I'm very happy that Chicago has this tour group. It's been one week short of two years since the first Segway HT sighting.
History
In February 2002 I started the first local functional "Segway" enthusiast group and web site dedicated to sharing news and resources surrounding the HT. On June 11, 2002 I was one of the first to attend one of the initial public Segway HT events held at the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry.
The HT is perfect in any city. I have been an owner for almost 19 months and have given over 1200 demos without one singe mishap.
Many of the disabled community have also adopted the HT as a mobility alternative; see their site at www.draft.cc
SEG America is an unbrella group for local groups, there's probably one in your town. www.segamerica.org
I purchased one of the ill fated Jr's the month they cam out. The Jr's dual cartridge ports for games were a nice approach for canned software like Andrew Tobias's "Managing Your Money". The ports attempted to compete with the Atari, Intellivision, et al. and failed horribly; games and software were priced way too high and competition destroyed the Jr.
The side-car expansion cards were sweet; no opening the box, just slap it on! No drivers needed, it just worked. (ok, maybe a config.sys mod but that's all)
The Jr. actually had two keyboards available. One being the chicklet type mentioned in the article, but they had a much nicer one available for about a hundred dollars. Infra-red was standard; and IBM was one of the first to introduce the optical mouse (but the mouse pad grid the mouse used to read the movement rubbed off after a couple of months use and cost $30 bucks to replace!)
Sound was a great feature for the Jr. as well. The Jr. was equipped with a "4-tone" sound system; meaning it could play 4 tones simultaneously; far superior to anything on the market at the Jr's price. The football game IBM offered even had voice! I distinctly remember my amazement when I hear the announcer's voice coming out of my PC Jr's speaker!
Few know this; but the Jr. also was one of the first to introduce EGA. I only remember it being available via BASIC.
I vaguely remember: POKE 32767, 1 for some odd reason.;-)
My father had the Xerox 820-II, what a $12,000 flop there huh? CoCo 2 (Radio Shack's Color Computer 2) was also a flop and I had that before the Jr. IBM's pioneering efforts helped steer our everyday PC luxuries. I was sixteen when I bought the Jr. and I have fond memories of writing my first database and for my first game.
20 Years later...Still coding away... All seeded from the days on a IBM PC Jr.
Today? Well, I rode into work on a Segway Human Transporter. I wonder what technologies it will spawn?
Now, you may think sounds crazy, but I thought of xml driven forms about a month ago. Today is the first time I have heard of it as a W3C standard!
I have a WYSIWYG I have been working on a (oops) MS VB.Net application that has a wrapper to an IE control. The IE control points to a html doc that contains JavaScript drag/drop code. What's nice is the ability to make calls back to the VB.Net application via window.external.foobar (foobar is in VB.Net) The js sets values to the controls for positioning.
The application described above is the xForms Wizard. As of today's date, the wizard does not actually create the output document; but it is coupled with the database Schema. (ie INFORMATION_SCHEMA in MS SQL Server)
The output document will need to be in xForms format, the bad thing is, I DON'T KNOW IT! LOL.
http://www.formsplayer.com offers a nice rendering engine (a piece I wasn't looking forward to creating with ASP.Net, yikes!)
anyone interested in helping to create a xForm doc from the property data from the xForm designer I started?
cheers!
______
A web form can be created in 10 minutes, period. --STLSegway/slashdot.org
Slashdot Mirror
I found this, perhaps they should talk to Ng. http://www.smarteye.se/home.html
A few years ago I went to Las Vegas and stay at Luxor hotel. I found out that the hotel has an iMax theater, so a friend and I thought we'd stand in line for about an hour to see "Mario Andretti's Super Speedway". (http://www.audio-ideas.com/reviews/dvd/super-spee dway.html) It had been my first time in an iMax so the thrill was out of this world. So, large, so close, great sound, etc., but there was one thing seriously missing and think this lens technology is the closest thing to fix the problem.
The problem is that when a camera focused on a subject, observers were forced to look at it and lot allowing a single observer to enjoy viewing other parts of the video. For example, Andretti was cruising down a long country road and the camera position was about 100 yards away at low altitude. The car and Mario were the subject; however, the scenery beyond the road appeared beautiful, but out of focus.
Here are two scenarios of usage:
1) Using the statue pictures on wired, imagine that you are looking at the far statue. Light-weight Eye-tracking glasses could track the x/y coordinates and quickly adjust the "z" focus my switching the image (on the video end, not the obsrever's glasses). When your eyes move to the right to the near statue, the software switches to that image. Very simple actually, but, this idea is only good for one observer. Think of the virtual reality possibilities!
2) Now back to Mario's scenario and the most expensive (I would think) solution. The observer is a "lens shifter" if you will. Essentially, the image the observer is seeing is either all out of focus to serve as a "common focus" or just focused on the subject. (I think all out of focus will work better.) A headset is worn by the observer containing thousands, if not millions, of small lenses and eye tracking capabilities. Auto-magically, the lenses adjust x/y viewpoints of the eye.
Perhaps we've been thinking too much about putting TVs on our heads rather than lenses and using a commonly-focused scene as a base. Kudos to Ng, this is the beginning of a great era in photography and movie making.
As VP of SEG America (www.segamerica.org) and long-time owner of a Segway HT, I can say that I'm very happy that Chicago has this tour group. It's been one week short of two years since the first Segway HT sighting.
History
The HT is perfect in any city. I have been an owner for almost 19 months and have given over 1200 demos without one singe mishap.
Many of the disabled community have also adopted the HT as a mobility alternative; see their site at www.draft.cc
SEG America is an unbrella group for local groups, there's probably one in your town. www.segamerica.org
I purchased one of the ill fated Jr's the month they cam out. The Jr's dual cartridge ports for games were a nice approach for canned software like Andrew Tobias's "Managing Your Money". The ports attempted to compete with the Atari, Intellivision, et al. and failed horribly; games and software were priced way too high and competition destroyed the Jr.
;-)
The side-car expansion cards were sweet; no opening the box, just slap it on! No drivers needed, it just worked. (ok, maybe a config.sys mod but that's all)
The Jr. actually had two keyboards available. One being the chicklet type mentioned in the article, but they had a much nicer one available for about a hundred dollars. Infra-red was standard; and IBM was one of the first to introduce the optical mouse (but the mouse pad grid the mouse used to read the movement rubbed off after a couple of months use and cost $30 bucks to replace!)
Sound was a great feature for the Jr. as well. The Jr. was equipped with a "4-tone" sound system; meaning it could play 4 tones simultaneously; far superior to anything on the market at the Jr's price. The football game IBM offered even had voice! I distinctly remember my amazement when I hear the announcer's voice coming out of my PC Jr's speaker!
Few know this; but the Jr. also was one of the first to introduce EGA. I only remember it being available via BASIC. I vaguely remember: POKE 32767, 1 for some odd reason.
My father had the Xerox 820-II, what a $12,000 flop there huh? CoCo 2 (Radio Shack's Color Computer 2) was also a flop and I had that before the Jr. IBM's pioneering efforts helped steer our everyday PC luxuries. I was sixteen when I bought the Jr. and I have fond memories of writing my first database and for my first game.
20 Years later...Still coding away... All seeded from the days on a IBM PC Jr.
Today? Well, I rode into work on a Segway Human Transporter. I wonder what technologies it will spawn?
Now, you may think sounds crazy, but I thought of xml driven forms about a month ago. Today is the first time I have heard of it as a W3C standard! I have a WYSIWYG I have been working on a (oops) MS VB.Net application that has a wrapper to an IE control. The IE control points to a html doc that contains JavaScript drag/drop code. What's nice is the ability to make calls back to the VB.Net application via window.external.foobar (foobar is in VB.Net) The js sets values to the controls for positioning. The application described above is the xForms Wizard. As of today's date, the wizard does not actually create the output document; but it is coupled with the database Schema. (ie INFORMATION_SCHEMA in MS SQL Server) The output document will need to be in xForms format, the bad thing is, I DON'T KNOW IT! LOL. http://www.formsplayer.com offers a nice rendering engine (a piece I wasn't looking forward to creating with ASP.Net, yikes!) anyone interested in helping to create a xForm doc from the property data from the xForm designer I started? cheers! ______ A web form can be created in 10 minutes, period. --STLSegway/slashdot.org