Last month we highlighted the revolutionary move by piratebay to allow the downloading of physical objects via pirated 3D print designs. This time it’s all legal and consumer friendly via the NY start-up shapeways. Shapeways is a shop for 3D objects and an instant route to market for, well, anyone.
In their own words:
“With a growing online community and marketplace, we’re a NY start-up that harnesses 3D printing to help you make, buy and sell anything you want.By providing a platform for our community members to share ideas and gain access to cutting edge technology, we’re bringing personalized production to everyone—whether you’re already designing in 3D or are just looking to buy something completely unique. We print everything on-demand, which means that every order is customized and personalized.
We’re working to democratize creation by making production more accessible, personal, and inspiring.”
We have seen some cool stuff in the past that could bring us closer to the Star Trek HoloDeck, e.g. the HoloDesk
And now Microsoft Research has pushed a little further and gives us a 3D hologram that is floating in mid air at 15 frames per second and is viewable from 192 different points at a time.
reminds me of Star Wars
Of course Kinect is involved here and the depth sensor makes it possible to interact with the hologram – you can basically touch it.
It is still a long way off from 3D hologram telephony or a full size HoloDeck, but for now this is pretty cool.
For the last few years Google has always stayed ahead of its rivals with products like Google Earth, Streetview, Maps etc but Nokia just launched the Beta of Ovi maps in 3D and it is mind blowing! Every texture is rendered in 3D on every building (for the major cities they have completed) and it is a lot of fun to play with. It’s not often that people in the office gather around a monitor and say “wow”… but today it happened. Well played Nokia – this is really cool.
Cities mapped in 3D in Ovi are : San Francisco, New York, Toronto, Miami, Boston, Chicago, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Barcelona, Helsinki, Milan, Prague, London, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Madrid, Oslo, Wien, Florence, Venice.
Alright, maybe that title is a little esoteric for the subject matter – but check out this coolness below.
This is the kind of 3D I’m excited about – the kind that removes the need for glasses. Sure, it might be hard to create 3D without glasses in a cinema setting where you’re unable to use head-coupling, but for personal devices? It’s great.
On a final note, something needs to be done about the term head-coupled. It’s gross.
Facehuggers, a modern classic example of head-coupling.
3D is cool, but I do not want to put on glasses every time I watch something in 3D.
There are plenty of glasses free TVs out there, but let’s face it I do not want to be confined to 3-5 spots in my living room and if I move a little bit the picture will look sh*t.
However, Japanese researchers have devised a new type of hologram technology. They work with normal light and can produce full-coloured 3D images.
This new technology works by hitting a thin metal film with three beams of white light, each from a different angle. Each beam excites a different colour of light, which then passes through an RGB hologram, combining to form a full-colour 3D image.
These holograms wouldn’t require glasses or viewing angles and how awesome would it be to have real life holograms acting out movies in your living room.
By now we all experienced kinect one way or another and I personally really enjoy my kinect at home.
Kinect has been talked and hacked a lot and most people can see much more in it than just a game controller.
Looks like MS Research is thinking the same thing and in the video below they are showing off some cool things, like head tracking, glasses free 3D, gesture based interfaces and more.
As we all know from past experiences, these may or may not happen, but right now they are pretty cool.
So who has the best interactive walls? Here’s some of our picks below. As we move into a world which is transitioning to devices using the NUI (Natural User Interface) there’s a lot to keep an eye on. If you know any more please post them in the comments.
1.University of Groningen: Pros: Looks awesome, very responsive. Multi-user capable. Cons: You can’t go out and buy one off the shelf. Touch based only?
2. Microsoft Xbox 360 Kinect AND Windows Phone 7, working together! Pros: Kinect SDK on the way for PC (fingers crossed) so a very affordable way to develop. Multi user. Facial recognition. Supports second screen in this video. Cons: None. Seriously! SDK pending, this will be the easiest entry point to start building your first video wall.
3. Toyota Vision Multi Touch Wall: Pros: Massive 82 inch screens at high res. Very responsive. Cons: Expensive setup.
4. HD 18 Screen 20 ft Paint Wall with iPad integration. Pros: Very cool. Huge. HD. Responsive. Works with a second screen (iPad) Cons: Looks a bit like a one off application for now. Can’t go out and buy one.
5.Yahoo’s Gesture based Video Wall. http://vimeo.com/19177169 Pros: Looks good, hi-resolution and seems responsive. Cons: Tiled screens. Looks like only one user at a time?
6. Microsoft LightSpace Pros: It’s a true 3D interface for an entire toom. It projects working interfaces onto your arm/ hand. Cons: Early days. Long way to go here (but still very cool).
7. Hard Rock Cafe Vegas: Pros: Multi user. Smooth and responsive. Great content. Cons: Looks expensive?
8. Ring Wall http://vimeo.com/6648869 Pros: It’s a massive 425 square metres in size. Enough room for everyone to play. Cons: With 15 HD projectors we’re betting the ongoing running costs might stack up?
9. The Schematic TouchWall with RFID Pros: It recognises RFID cards allowing you access to personal info. Social integration. Cons: Nothing obvious. This wall is pretty cool.
10. The BendDesk. Pros: It’s horizontal AND vertical. Cons: Not quite wall sized! It’s a prototype so a little rough round the edges.
11. Canon’s big wall – Expo 2010 Pros: It’s looks big and multi user. Cons: We can’t quite tell if this is a ‘smoke and mirrors’ job. This video is more about the camera than the wall itself.
12. HP’s video wall of touch (link): Pros: Nice tight looking tiled screens. Cons Already looking a bit dated compered to the others. Touch only. Touch looks a little laggy.
13. The Giant iPhone – Table Connect Pros: Pretty simple concept. Just plug in your iphone and mount it on a wall! Cons: Do they make a wall sized one yet?
We’re pretty sure we’ll be seeing a lot more of these soon. Please send us any good ones we might have missed! 🙂
As usual everybody seems to be waiting to announce their new products at CES and this year hasn’t been any different.
And again we are overwhelmed with information from everyone and blinded by all the new shiny products. I will have to get a 2nd job to be able to afford all the new gadgets I want now.
So below is a list of my favourites from the CES this year that I found on different blogs around the internets (maybe one day I will be able to go there in person)
So here I will be showing you tablets, 3D stuff, Microsoft hardware and some other cool stuff I came across
This is 10 minutes of your time you won’t regret spending. Breathtaking CGI / animation meets architecture and photography. Hard to believe this is all computer rendered. Quite stunning – just watch it:
The Third & The Seventh by Alex Roman. “A FULL-CG animated piece that tries to illustrate architecture art across a photographic point of view where main subjects are already-built spaces. Sometimes in an abstract way. Sometimes surreal.”
When a new bit of tech is released it’s always fun to see what crazy/creative new things people can do with it. Dentsu London, in collaboration with BERG have produced a short film exploring the idea of “Making future magic” using the iPad to “paint” 3D objects in the air and bring it all together with long-exposure photography.
The MIT Lab has shown off a new kind of display that not only is capable of the usual multitouch functions, but also recognizes gestures in front of the device like we know from minority report.
Pretty cool I say – still a bit slow in the video, but already pretty awesome for a prototype.
The Cambridge University Engineering Department developed ProForma.
ProFORMA (which stands for ‘Probabilistic Feature-based On-line Rapid Model Acquisition’) is some cool system that turns any ordinary webcam into a powerful 3D scanning tool.
The 3D models are constructed on the spot while you slowly rotate the objects.
As the user rotates the object in front of a stationary camera, a partial model is reconstructed and displayed to the user to assist view planning. The model is also used by the system to robustly track the pose of the object. Models are rapidly produced through a Delaunay tetrahedralisation of points obtained from on-line structure from motion estimation, followed by a probabilistic tetrahedron carving step to obtain a textured surface mesh of the object.
Fractal lovers, brace yourselves. Here you will find some awesome pictures of the 3D Mandelbrot, “Mandelbulb”. Infinite awesome, on infinite levels. Here are four of the more impressive perspectives:
a new research project called the H.VR Editor allows you to "touch" and interact with CGI objects. Objects respond according to a pre-programmed graph of hardness values, and the system is capable of simulating texture and events like button presses.
No more building mockups – just put the right values in the program and off you go.
Imagine trying out the feel of a keyboard on your new phone without the phone ever being build or the feel of your new carpet at home without the carpet being manufactured first.
sounds pretty interesting to me – wouldn’t mind having a go at it.
Posted by benhourahine 
Amnesia Blog 
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