Today was the day I did, among many other things, a walk through the Emerging Technologies part of Siggraph. It's a showcase of new and exciting things that researchers, artists, technicians, and students are working on. It was dark in there so my pictures aren't the best, but I'll try to explain what's going on.
This was one of the coolest things I've seen, ever. It was straight out of science fiction books. The technology presented was basically a way to see through walls and other opaque objects. Imagine in your car, you can't really see the curb next to the door as you're driving because the door is in the way. With this technology, they take a camera and place it outside the car, and then project that image, where it really should be, on the inside of the car. It makes it seem like you can see through the door! In the demo going on for the picture, I sat in the chair and they placed this helmet on me that had a kind of head's up display on it. It showed real-time video of the outside of the walls, making it seem like I could see right through them. Awesome!
This was really neat, and something I could easily see inside of a museum as a teaching tool. The image of the Earth was projected onto the sphere, and you could physically rotate it as fast as you wanted and the image stayed with it. To see the other side of the Earth you just turn it around. The rings on the outside could be rotated as well, and what they did was move the display through time - so you could see the continents move and evolve over millions of years. The best part was when the person showing us how it works (that's his hand), rotated the display to millions of years in the future, when, as it turns out, there will be one huge megacontinent (again).
This was a huge 3D image that popped way out of the screen. The 3D technology at this year's Siggraph has come very, very far!
This doesn't look like much (a Star Wars TIE Fighter), but when you're actually there seeing it, it looks incredible. The great part about this virtual image is that it was in a display that you could walk all the way around, and see all the sides of it. It was like putting a coffee cup on a table and walking around it - but in this case the image was totally virtual. It's as close as I've ever seen to the technology in Star Wars and Star Trek.
This picture and the next three are all Microsoft's new Surface computer, which was way more impressive than I thought it would be. I got to play around with it a little bit, and the thing is great. It's basically a table, but you can do so much to it, and it's very "smart" in it's own way. The first application we tried was painting (above), and the way it could follow many fingers and hands was great. I had five fingers all on the surface, and so did two other people, and the computer kept up with it and drew everything where we touched.
This was great, because all the presenter did was place a credit card down on the table, and the computer knew what it was. It must have been a special credit card to be able to transfer its data, but still very cool. It had the person's name, and when it was time to "pay" for the meal, you just dragged pictures of what you bought by putting your finger down and pulling them into the credit card. Charges could automatically be made, and there was even a slider for leaving a certain amount of tip.
This is the photo application. The best part of this was that the presenter actually took a few pictures with a digital camera, then just placed the camera down on the surface. After a few seconds the images popped right off the camera and onto the screen, ready to be moved around, resized, and rotated. It does the same thing with videos, as they're playing. Awesome.
This was a fun one. The screen could detect objects on it, so when you put a string down, a few seconds later a little train showed up and started driving along it. If you made a loop out of the string, a pond would show up, with flowers around it and fish swimming around.
With this one, if you look at the little lighted table at the bottom of the picture, you can see a little plastic camera and a rectangular object. The rectangle (they had a few of them) had a complicated looking mathematical equation on it. Depending on which one you put down, the 3D object represented by the equation would show up on the projected screen above. Then, you could move the little plastic camera around and see the different sides of the 3D object. If you rotated the camera in place, it would zoom in and out. It was an awesome way to visualize complex math.
This I believe will be everywhere in the not-too-distant future. It was a paper thin electronic display. That's my hand holding onto it! The E-Ink words and the image above it were animated to change color from black to white and back again, over and over. It's still in its early stages, but I could see that the technology was starting to really come to fruition.
This was one of the coolest things I've seen, ever. It was straight out of science fiction books. The technology presented was basically a way to see through walls and other opaque objects. Imagine in your car, you can't really see the curb next to the door as you're driving because the door is in the way. With this technology, they take a camera and place it outside the car, and then project that image, where it really should be, on the inside of the car. It makes it seem like you can see through the door! In the demo going on for the picture, I sat in the chair and they placed this helmet on me that had a kind of head's up display on it. It showed real-time video of the outside of the walls, making it seem like I could see right through them. Awesome!
This was really neat, and something I could easily see inside of a museum as a teaching tool. The image of the Earth was projected onto the sphere, and you could physically rotate it as fast as you wanted and the image stayed with it. To see the other side of the Earth you just turn it around. The rings on the outside could be rotated as well, and what they did was move the display through time - so you could see the continents move and evolve over millions of years. The best part was when the person showing us how it works (that's his hand), rotated the display to millions of years in the future, when, as it turns out, there will be one huge megacontinent (again).
This was a huge 3D image that popped way out of the screen. The 3D technology at this year's Siggraph has come very, very far!
This doesn't look like much (a Star Wars TIE Fighter), but when you're actually there seeing it, it looks incredible. The great part about this virtual image is that it was in a display that you could walk all the way around, and see all the sides of it. It was like putting a coffee cup on a table and walking around it - but in this case the image was totally virtual. It's as close as I've ever seen to the technology in Star Wars and Star Trek.
This picture and the next three are all Microsoft's new Surface computer, which was way more impressive than I thought it would be. I got to play around with it a little bit, and the thing is great. It's basically a table, but you can do so much to it, and it's very "smart" in it's own way. The first application we tried was painting (above), and the way it could follow many fingers and hands was great. I had five fingers all on the surface, and so did two other people, and the computer kept up with it and drew everything where we touched.
This was great, because all the presenter did was place a credit card down on the table, and the computer knew what it was. It must have been a special credit card to be able to transfer its data, but still very cool. It had the person's name, and when it was time to "pay" for the meal, you just dragged pictures of what you bought by putting your finger down and pulling them into the credit card. Charges could automatically be made, and there was even a slider for leaving a certain amount of tip.
This is the photo application. The best part of this was that the presenter actually took a few pictures with a digital camera, then just placed the camera down on the surface. After a few seconds the images popped right off the camera and onto the screen, ready to be moved around, resized, and rotated. It does the same thing with videos, as they're playing. Awesome.
This was a fun one. The screen could detect objects on it, so when you put a string down, a few seconds later a little train showed up and started driving along it. If you made a loop out of the string, a pond would show up, with flowers around it and fish swimming around.
With this one, if you look at the little lighted table at the bottom of the picture, you can see a little plastic camera and a rectangular object. The rectangle (they had a few of them) had a complicated looking mathematical equation on it. Depending on which one you put down, the 3D object represented by the equation would show up on the projected screen above. Then, you could move the little plastic camera around and see the different sides of the 3D object. If you rotated the camera in place, it would zoom in and out. It was an awesome way to visualize complex math.
This I believe will be everywhere in the not-too-distant future. It was a paper thin electronic display. That's my hand holding onto it! The E-Ink words and the image above it were animated to change color from black to white and back again, over and over. It's still in its early stages, but I could see that the technology was starting to really come to fruition.
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