Advertisement

Real-time tracking and projection mapping keeps getting better

Minimal latency, maximum wow.

Japanese creative studio P.I.C.S. have set a mindbending new standard for real-time tracking and projection mapping with their latest visual creation, EXISDANCE.

The technology has been around for a while, although it arguably first captured the mainstream public's imagination at the Grammy's last year, when a red bright lightning bolt appeared on Lady Gaga's face during her David Bowie tribute.

Since then we've seen Disney take scary clown makeup to the next level with its 'Makeup Lamps', plus any number of visual delights from creative studios demonstrating the technology's increasingly precise capabilities, but the latest offering from P.I.C.S. (the same team that made the weird Nintendo Switch advert), is an absolutely spectacular execution.

This isn't straightforward projection. A complex set of algorithms is responding to the dancer's movements and creating a visual accompaniment in real-time. Latency -- the time between generating a particular image and matching it to the pose -- is one of the biggest challenges in this kind of live augmentation, but as you can see here the P.I.C.S. team have nailed it. Minimal latency, maximum wow.