Sure,
3D adds a little more dimensionality to your couch-bound viewing experience, but it's far from the truly immersive virtual reality people have promising for decades. Surround Vision isn't quite VR either, but it's an interesting way of breaking the perception barrier, allowing a viewer to pan around a scene outside the perspective offered by one display. It's a project by Santiago Alfaro, graduate student at MIT's Media Lab, and relies on a tablet with a compass. In his demo he filmed video from three perspectives and is able to display the center perspective on the main TV while panning around to the other two with the tablet. It's an interesting idea to bring some aspect of interactivity to the viewing process, but we could see Hollywood turning it into the
next big gimmick, with the leading man pointing off screen dramatically and saying "Oh my god, what's that?" before waiting patiently for a few seconds while the audience scrambles to pan around and find the horror. Yeah, we've got your number, Michael Bay. Immersive video demonstration after the break for you to lose yourself in.
posted April 9th 2010 8:43AM
Good.
Now you can focus on the angle you want while watching pr0n.
@Eternity
Same thing i tought :-D
@Eternity Only if they film all the angles though, which isn't going to happen because it's only useful for people who:
a) have a TV on their lap while watching TV
b) care about what's happening off-screen
In other words only the nerd in the above video who needs a paycheck so has come up with a useless device so his funders don't think he's actually been sitting around watching TV all day instead of making something useful.
These ideas shouldn't get beyond the drawing board because they clearly have no practical use whatsoever.
@Eternity Wouldn't you need another hand if you were holding the device with both hands? It would probably get tiring holding it with one hand for extended periods of time...
You can combine this with Google Street View
@violator
Android supports that functionality for Street view. It's pretty awesome actually.
A 'magnetic' compass hey? Lol
@Robsta Yeah, I suppose that was an unnecessary qualification, wasn't it?
@TimStevens Haha, that's cool... You meant Digital Compass right?
@Robsta Something to that effect.
Cool. I tried to mimic this at home by getting the tube from some toilet roll, closing one eye, looking through the tube with the other eye and sitting less than a foot from the television. :-P
@jaCoomey
seriously?
Dude this combined with porn would be so awesome :)
suggestion -- add a control to zoom in and out by tilting the device forward and backwards as well as incorporating other movements into this kind of thing -- multitouch gestures, etc...maybe if you wanted to zoom in on a certain spot you can double tap then tilt device, or you can forget about the tilt and just do pinch to zoom...this has many possibilities.
@DoctarPeppar pinch to zoom porn sure has a ring to it... But most importantly, could you just point it at an girl that passed by?? =]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scmpg8AfOzE
No thanks, I prefer not to continually search where the action is....TV should be stupid-simple (switching to "couch-potato-mode" after 10 hours working day).
Also, did he try to hold a tablet for 90 minutes in mid air?? sounds like a painful way to watch TV :/
@talk
i agree. this project's premises is meh at best
yeah sure. I'd love to watch things at 2fps while I miss something that happened off screen.
sorry bud, the ideas not that great.
This really is his research project? You sure it's not a joke?
I'm at a loss for words to describe how pointless this is. Might as use the freaking arrows on the remote to achieve the same useless panning.
I prefer this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw
and this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRBTR9R3pio&feature=related
They're basically the same, except one requires wearing a stupid headset (and is presented by Johnny Lee) and the other doesn't (and isn't).