Drawing 3D images in real time

here is a video of a guy that draws 3D images so that they appear before your very eyes, and stand, or move, or whatever upon the surface on which you project them. I thought it would be interesting. Also, it might be able to be used for flashlights! The guy says you can put different physical attributes (right word?) and program them into the digital image. So you can calculate things like color, size, appearance in general, and for us, voltage, amps, size of reflector, other things like that, and put it all into the digital image, and test out that image!!! Wouldnt that make modding so much easier? no more frying LEDs? no more messups? just instant testers that can be deleted in a snap?
http://gprime.net/video.php/totalimmersion
In the video, they demonstrated some kind of Audi, and showed that you can change its abilities, and stuff like that. All that can be possible with flashlights too!

Geez Mags, you find some awsome crap!!!!!

WOW that was pretty darn cool... How did they do that...


-tom

Wow, i would love to have been at this conference!!! It's so cool!!

Yeah, if I had my hands on that kind of tech, I would use it for all sorts of things. I am still wondering how they did that....

That was awesome! I noticed that they had trouble with hidden surface removal while the demonstrator was holding the light sabre (it didn't disappear behind his left hand) but that was pretty minor compared to what they were able to accomplish.

I'm guessing this is an outgrowth of things like Orad's Virtual Sets (http://www.orad.tv/) and the technology behind the virtual-yellow-line in football. The camera has a tracking mechanism attached to it so the rendering computer knows where it's pointing, how far it's zoomed, etc, and there must be a mechanism for tracking the talent's hand in 3-D space also.

Heh, I saw a demo of this here in Lyon (France), and the result is pretty bluffing! The demo ddidn't even need a very high power computer, it was runnning on a P4~2GHz.
PS: what do you think of the accent when frenchies like us speak in English? My accent is much worse than his /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon15.gif

Olivier

Yeah I noticed his heavy accent. But I still was able to understand what he was saying. I wonder why this kind of thing didnt make the front pages of newspapers though?

How was the system sensing the position of his hand? Was it parsing the video from the camera, or did he have some sort of device (RF tag, IR source, reflector) on his hand?

It was done exclusively by video camera. I was able to "test" it myself, and got to hold the light sabre /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif
To be exact, there were 2 video cameras, to give depth info.
The guy said they could do it with just one, but it wasn't as fast nor as fluid.