Moverio gives you 3D movies and Internet access for only $770!

Check Facebook posts, the Twitter feed, text someone, Google that actor in that movie you saw that time…watch a 3D movie. Epson has come up with yet another way for us to tune out those humans nearby who annoyingly keep trying to have a conversation with us. Why waste your time when you’ve got YouTube?

The new Moverio headset is a see-through 3D display that wears like a pair of funky shades. Run on Android 2.2, the display appears as an 80-inch 3D screen 5 meters in front of you. To avoid open manholes the glasses allow you to see what’s going on in the real world while you watch Lord of The Rings.

It supports MPEG-4/MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 video files and has 1GB of internal memory and a slot for a microSD card. The binocular displays have 960×540 resolution. The glasses also have Wi-Fi so you can access videos from YouTube or surf the web. Just want to close your eyes and relax to music? Moverio also supports AAC and MP3 audio files.

I hope my wife is reading this article because man I want one. Here’s my Christmas gift pitch: a normal 80-inch TV is like, $4,000, and they don’t come with 3D, Moverio is just $770. And I can watch football without bothering anybody. Sounds like a win-win to me.

[image credits: TechCrunch]
images: TechCrunch

Director Peter Jackson returns to Bilbo's house in Bag End to film J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit."

Are you ready to go back to Middle Earth?

Be sure, lad. Once we begin our journey, there’s no turning back. Along the way we are sure to see Orcs and Trolls, menacing Wargs and Giant Spiders, Shapeshifters and Sorcerers…and the valiant act of a most unlikely hero.

And we’re going to see it in 3D.

(OK, we admit The Hobbit is a little off the topic for Singularity Hub, but we don’t care because we think it’s just too damn cool. And we’re betting that many of our readers will think the same.)

Director Peter Jackson has assembled his band of adventurers to begin filming “The Hobbit,” a two-part production that is the prequel to “The Lord of The Rings” trilogy. The shoot began March 21st at the Stoney Street Studios in New Zealand where Jackson shot the trilogy. The two parts will be shot back-to-back, with the release of the tentatively titled “There and Back Again” December 19, 2012 and “The Hobbit: An/The Unexpected Journey” sometime in 2013.

Shot in 3D, the films are expected to cost an unheard of $500 million a piece, which will make them the two most expensive films ever created. The current record is held by “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End,” which cost a comparably paltry $300 million. Avatar, to date the most expensive 3D movie ever filmed cost an estimated $237 million. The no-holds-barred price tag of the Hobbit movies are in part due to the resolution that Jackson plans to shoot with. He’s doubling the normal 24 frames per second and shooting at 48 fps. Ye Tolkien fans rejoice!

The filming couldn’t have started soon enough for cast and crew. Since Jackson first presented the idea to adapt J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic back in 1997 the film has gone through a myriad of setbacks that included legal battles, union disputes, director departures, and financial difficulties of MGM and New Line studios. Even health was a problem: in February Jackson was hospitalized for a perforated stomach ulcer. Go figure.

If you’re a big Tolkien fan like I am you can’t wait to crouch through Gollum’s caverns beneath the Misty Mountains, or take a stroll through Rivendell, or curl up in a corner of Bag End–all in 3D. The video below is a first look into the early days of Peter Jackson’s vision of the wonderful world that Tolkien created.

Relevant links:
Official Hobbit Movie Blogsite
Sir Ian McKellen’s (Gandalf) Hobbit Movie Blogsite

[video credit: SciFiMafia via youtube]
video: youtube

The 3D custom-fit iUni knee replacement by ConforMIS complements the patient's anatomy.

Like the treads on car tires, the all important cartilage within our knees is slowly wearing down. By the age of 65, in fact, nearly 50 percent of us are likely to suffer from a painful degeneration of this cartilage called osteoarthritis. It’s estimated that one in eight of us will suffer so badly that we will require a partial or full knee replacement via surgery within our lifetimes. As barbaric as it may sound to replace part of your knee with artificial components, a privately-held company named ConforMIS has pioneered a technology to produce custom fit, 3D implants using patient CT scans to resurface bone and minimize the amount of tissue cut out. ConforMIS is trailblazing a revolutionary trend in medicine in which medical devices are tailored precisely to the individual patient, reducing surgery times, speeding up recovery, and improving patient satisfaction. Suddenly becoming cybernetic doesn’t sound so bad.

About half a million knee replacement surgeries are currently conducted in the US every year and that number is expected to rise above three million in the next 15 years. Current implants require a number of cuts to the femur and/or tibia to fit the device. Additionally, many of the products that are currently on the market are off-the-shelf devices that come in a few sizes, so surgeons have to slice off even more bone in order to get them to fit. This can lead to long surgeries and increase the discomfort of recovery as well as the time it takes to get back to normal, usually six to eight weeks. While some knee replacements can last 20 years without noticeable wear, patients that need another replacement may have difficulty because they’ve already had a significant amount of bone removed. This is expected to be a growing problem as the average age that patients are seeking knee replacements is decreasing and people are staying active later in life.

As crowded as this multibillion dollar market is, ConforMIS started up in 2004 to take a fresh approach to knee replacement surgery by custom tailoring surgical tools and implants using patient MRI and CT scans. The result is phenomenal: scans of the patient’s leg are sent to ConforMIS for analysis, and just six weeks later a 3D custom-fit implant is created that precisely fits the patient’s anatomy. A future in which we can trick out our bodies is here. The company’s attitude toward knee surgery is even reflected in their name, where “MIS” is short for “Minimally Invasive Surgery.” Over the past seven years, they’ve garnered $80 million in funding and launched two products for partial knee replacements, the iUni and iDuo, and last month, they received FDA clearance to release their total knee replacement, dubbed the iTotal.

The key to developing patient-specific implants is using personalized imaging data, and toward this end, ConforMIS developed their iFit technology, where the “i” stands for “individualized. This software takes the CT data of the patient’s knee, hip and ankle to create models that account for the unique anatomy of the patient’s entire leg. These models are used to create both the implants and the tools to install them. These tools, called jigs, are the exact same shape as the implants, so they align perfectly to the patient’s knee, but they also have placement and cutting guides that allow the surgeon to make precise cuts to remove minimal amount of bone. With these tools, inserting the implant is a bit like snapping a Lego piece into position exactly where it belongs, resulting in much less manual effort and hence less errors from the surgeon.

Should an orthopedic surgeon determine that a ConforMIS product is a good solution to a patient’s knee problems, they’ll send the patient in to have X-ray tomography of the affected knee. These CT scans are then sent to ConforMIS who manufacture the personalized implants and instrumentation and ship them back to the surgeon when ready. Once the surgeon has installed the implants, the patient goes through all the normal recovery procedures for knee surgery, although surgeons report that with the ConforMIS products, some patients are walking around the next day and are released quickly. Cost-wise, custom-made implants are twice as expensive to manufacture, but ConforMIS does not have to maintain the same massive inventory as competitors, so they can offer the implants at comparable prices to other knee replacement devices.

It’s no surprise that the potential to use this technology in other joints is being developed, as ConforMIS has acquired patents for the hip and ankle as well as the spine. The company values the feedback from surgeons and patients acquired through clinical trials, which has led to the launch of second generation devices last year. Still, they are in an ideal position to provide an increasing number of options for people seeking replacement solutions that are customized to their individual bodies. And who knows what other ways 3D image-to-implant technology is going to transform medicine? We’ve recently reported another success story about a similar custom-fit mesh device designed by an engineer to fit around his own aorta. These stories bode well for the emerging era of personalized medicine, promising a future in which the one-size-fits-all approach to healthcare can be put to rest.

[Sources: Annals of Internal Medicine, CDC, ConforMIS, NEJM, OrthoTec]

3D maps, like this one from Bing, help draw you in.

What’s the feature on my iPhone that I use the most? It’s not games, nor music, nor texting…not even calling. The tool I use most often on my smart phone is the map. And it’s not just because I’m prone to get lost and need directions. I’m also looking for good places to eat, checking on traffic and travel times, and geo-tagging photos. Online maps have become an indispensable part of our world, and they’re only going to grow in importance in the years ahead. They are getting upgraded in detail, with 3D layouts, advanced terrain, and better street view images. And we’re filling these richly drawn maps with tons of media: videos, photos, wiki articles, critical reviews, and status updates. The future of maps is going to merge the digital and real worlds in a way that makes them even more central to the way we live. Here’s how.

Maps Go 3D

If you haven’t downloaded the Google Earth plugin, please do so. While you’re at it, go visit Bing with IE or Firefox and download their 3D mapping file too. Got ‘em? Good. These two maps, with all their 3D flashiness, are at the forefront of making virtual geography more realistic. Using aerial photography and some pretty amazing photo-stitching programs, Google and Microsoft have devised ways of taking two dimensional pictures and bending them into a 3D virtual world. The effect is a little weird looking (like playing a real-world version of Doom) but it gives you the sense of the actual height and depth of the area you’re exploring in the map. As an avid apartment searcher, these 3D maps give me a much better sense of the neighborhood and feel of a perspective home. Even with a skewed view, three dimensional images just make you feel more present in a map.

Of course, these 3D dimensional distortions don’t come cheap, computationally speaking. It takes some major processing mojo to dynamically move through a 3D rendered environment formed from thousands of 2D photos. An alternative, which potentially uses less computing power, is to have 3D maps drawn from vectors. Several companies are pursuing that approach, with UpNext being one of the better examples. UpNext gives you a very life-like 3D model of a city that easily resizes and tilts as you explore the map. It’s available on your iPhone, but only in a few select locations.

Whether it’s with photo-stitching or vector rendering, 3D perspectives pull you in. Such techniques solve one of the bigger limitations of maps – letting you know what things will actually look like to you when you get to the place your looking for. When 3D maps really get into full swing, with higher detailed images and more processing power behind them, exploring them will be like exploring the real world.

But 3D maps require a lot of capital to create at the moment, meaning you’ll only have a few (coporately sponsored) views of a location. Which is why futuristic maps are already starting to include…

Crowdsourced Media

Why let Microsoft and Google show you the world, when all your friends on Facebook can give you a much more personal view. With geo-tagging (linking data with a geographic location), photos can be placed directly on a map exactly where they were taken. Videos, too. Google Maps has become inundated with the camera-droppings of thousands of users who are uploading their media directly onto the maps. Go to the ‘more’ button in Google Maps and check the boxes for videos and photos. It’s crazy. You can see directly into someone’s record of an event, and know exactly where it happened.

Google is awash with user videos and photos. What's a place really like? Check them out and see.

It’s not stopping there. Instead of looking at memories, we’re going to start looking at what’s actively happening in realtime. As we saw in Blaise Aguera y Arcas’ TED presentation, Bing is working on including live video feeds from users in the field. Such technology is still in early development, and there currently aren’t many people constantly uploading video feeds of their lives. Eventually, however, such realtime video could completely blanket densely populated urban areas. You could log on to Bing and not just see a 3D map of the world, you could see what was actively happening in any location you wanted. That’s just nuts…and it’s coming fairly soon.

Of course, one of the most interesting aspects of this explosion of mapped media is that it is driven almost entirely by users. Google and Microsoft aren’t going to pay millions of people to take photos and geo-tag them. We’re going to do that ourselves. Why? The same reason we share photos on Facebook. Social media is addictive, and it builds this non-traditional sense of community where loved ones can be very distant from you but still actively involved in your life. Alternatively, completely anonymous people can affect your life because they share your location and interests. Which brings us to…

Everyone’s A Critic

Along with photos and videos, geo-tagging has brought about a new way of vetting restaurants, shops, and venues. Programs like Yelp let you add your opinion into a database of criticism and praise. I just go to the Yelp map, and let it not only tell me what’s around but which places are ranked as the best deals. Forget traditional food columnists in newspapers, when I want know which new restaurant to try I look up scores on Yelp. It’s peer-reviewed food. Same for shops, music hotspots, even dentists.

Smart phone applications like FourSquare, Gowalla, and Booyah add in an element of gaming. Do you like the noodle house near your work? FourSquare lets you check-in and get points every time you go there. Go there enough and you become the mayor of the restaurant. Gowalla has a similar system, and Booyah lets you outright ‘own’ a virtual copy of the place. Along with virtual points, these applications can give you real-world prizes (free food and drink are common) when vendors play along to draw interest.

These companies (and many others) are finding ways to harness user opinions by tying them down to maps. Advertisements, featured links, and give-away deals provide means for them to generate revenue while you and I create all the content. Crowd-sourcing media is a great idea, but it’s these crowd-sourced experiences that are becoming really addictive. The truth is that most of us don’t always know how to decide which car rental place to use, which bar to visit, and which attorney to represent us for drunk driving. But Yelp knows. It’s like having thousands of semi-anonymous friends giving you advice all at once. Scary but awesome.

More and More Layers To the Cake

Why stop at 3D renderings, media, and opinions – there’s so much more that can fit on a map. And it looks like we’re going to cram in everything we can. Real estate? Google Maps has it directly on the site and specialists like PadMapper and HousingMaps provide slightly tweaked and filtered versions to make your house-hunting easier. Wikipedia? The encyclopedia anyone can edit now has many articles linked to the real-world locations they correspond to, just look for the “coordinates” at the top right of the page. Again, Google let’s you see these directly on their maps. News? Companies like Fwix are giving you local news and showing exactly where it happens. Crime? Dozens of agencies, like CrimeReports, display publicly released statistics about law infractions of all kinds. Is there something else you want to add into a map? Well, create your own. Personalized maps in Google let you add icons and drop them onto locations and then share your newly labeled world with others. Open Street Map is an open source project that lets you edit the map itself.

As more and more layers are added to maps, you’ll be able to customize what you see when you want to see it. Need to know which nightclub is bumping right now? Live video feeds will give a picture while apps like FourSquare will tell you which people are there. Want to take a virtual tour through wine country? Turn off all the layers and just enjoy a 3D stroll through the map. Eventually we’ll be able to set alerts (just as we can do with search results) and you’ll get traffic, crime, and news updates relevant to the places you live and travel. Personalized and dynamic maps are going to be amazing and they’re already halfway here.

As more people use and share information through them, advanced maps will become even more powerful. You’ll be able to see what a place looks like through the multi-faceted insect eyes of social media, and use that insight to plan how you yourself would like to travel and interact. Right now there are still geographic frontiers this technology has yet to cross (street views of Silicon Valley are a lot easier to get a hold of than Mozambique) but the prevalence of mobile phones will change that. In a decade just as the internet lets us learn about any thing, internet maps will let us learn about any where. The world will really be at our fingertips.

[image credits:Google, Bing]
[video credits: UpNext, Howcast]
[source: Google, Bing, UpNext]

Lumino blocks interact with Microsoft Surface to extend digital information into a 3D environment.

It never fails: give scientists a new bit of technology and they’ll find a way to use it to play with blocks. Maybe it’s all the Legos we enjoyed as children. In any case, researchers at the University of Potsdam’s Hasso Plattner Institute have developed Lumino, a system of blocks that interact with Microsoft Surface. The table sized touchscreen has had many interesting features, but never true 3D manipulation. Lumino changes all that by letting Microsoft Surface see through the shapes it uses. Each block is identified by markings and these markers are transferred through lower level blocks to the touchscreen via embedded fiber optics. This lets a user stack up to 10 layers of Lumino blocks to create a 3D shape that can interact with Microsoft Surface’s software. Developers suggest it may have powerful applications in architecture and design. Check out the video from New Scientist after the break.

We’ve seen many different next generation human-computer interface (HCI) devices. Most focus on including a tactile/kinetic interaction to give humans a more intuitive means of manipulating digital information. Lumino does that and provides a truly dynamic 3D environment, something that with which other systems have struggled. The blocks used in Lumino do not contain any electronic or mechanically moving pieces, they are essentially just hard shapes filled with fiber optics. This simplicity sets Lumino apart from photoelastic techniques which rely on an added overhead camera. Still, watching the demonstration doesn’t leave me with the impression that I really need a Lumino system, or even Microsoft Surface. It will likely take several rounds of invention, redesigning, and marketing before these next gen HCI systems are sophisticated enough to provide an experience that is obviously superior in day to day applications to what we use now. When that happens, sign me up for some high tech building blocks. I’ll want to play, too.

[photo credit: University of Potsdam]
[video credit: New Scientist]

Avatar Movie an animation marvel?

The Avatar Movie from renowned director James Cameron is set to open in theaters worldwide this week.  Cameron, creator of movie greats including Terminator, Aliens, and The Abyss, not to mention Titanic, the highest grossing film of all time, has not released a movie in 11 years.  Touting a more than $300 million budget, reportedly the most advanced special effects ever seen in movie making, and the prowess of Cameron himself, the hype for the Avatar movie would seem impossible to live up to.  Yet indications from last week’s premier of the film in London indicate that the movie just might live up to viewers’ lofty expectations after all.

Those who attended the London premier were reportedly raving about the stunning animation and overall wonder of Avatar’s fictional planet Pandora and its inhabitants.  Several viewers have noted a weak plot fraught with overused cliches,  yet the overall consensus seems to be that the impressive animation and vision of this film make it a must see movie destined for box office success.  For what its worth, Rottentomatoes has given the movie a respectable 84% rating.

Movie reporting isn’t a staple for us here at the Hub, but movies like Avatar loaded with futuristic visions of telepresence, alien civilizations, and medical marvels are right up our alley.  From a technical standpoint the Avatar movie gains our attention because it represents a radical shift to more realistic, more immersive movie animation.  The Avatar movie has amassed the budget, the credibility, and the talent required to create a new standard for movie animation techniques that will set the pace for the rest of the industry in the years to come.  Just as with the Star Wars films before it, the Avatar movie is an animated marvel today, but in only 5 years will look dated and normal as it propels the rest of the industry to a new level of greatness.  After seeing the Avatar movie viewers will expect more, and we will all benefit from a new generation of more realistic movies that entertain our imaginations.

Avatar's Pandora Planet

With its wide release in a format allowing viewers to wear glasses for full 3D immersion, Avatar joins an impressive host of 3D films that have been released this year.  As we wrote earlier, although 3D movie technology has been available for well over 50 years, 2009 will mark the year that the technology has overcome political, financial, and technical hurdles to finally break out into mass production in theaters across the globe.  This is just the tip of the iceberg of a trend in virtual realism that is bridging the gap between the physical and virtual worlds.

As long as we enter the movie with the right expectations of stunning animation supported by a mediocre plot, the most anticipated movie of the year looks to be a winner.  In a toast to the future (and supposedly a better viewing experience) be sure to check out the movie in 3D if a theater near you supports the format.  Pandora, here we come!

Below is the trailer in case you live under a rock and haven’t seen it yet, or if you understandably just want to see it again:

The Wizard of Oz? Emperor Palpatine? Jambi from Pee-wee's Playhouse? No, that's just Andrew in accounting.

While holographic teleconferencing may be a wonderful application of this technology, the effects could be seen in a far wider arena. ICT can broadcast your face in real time, but they can also do the same with almost any image. Pre-recorded images can be rotated and manipulated and viewed in a full 360° arc. The possibilities for modeling and sharing 3D images are amazing. You can also scale large recorded images (like someone’s full body) down to fit in the head-sized viewing area. Hopefully we’ll see this scaling incorporated into the teleconferencing system. How cool would it be to have real Star Wars style communication in your home or office? Check out the pre-recorded image demonstration video further below.

While some may define true holography as involving phased laser light, ICT took a somewhat simpler approach. The secret is an A-frame made of two slightly concave mirrors and a really smart timing algorithm. Project an image onto a mirror and it appears at some point in space. Rotate the mirror and you can trace that point in a full 360° arc. Rotate fast enough, and each point in space can have multiple images shown per second. Basically each point in space gets its own simple animation. With the right timing, you can show the left eye and right eye slightly different images and make an object appear in 3D. Sounds complicated, looks awesome.

For real-time teleconferencing, a person sits in front of a few cameras. These cameras can develop a 3D image of someone using some special lamps that illuminate the face with a wave pattern. If you’re really interested in the technical aspect of it, the third video explains it pretty well. Suffice to say that the combination of lighting and cameras allow someone to appear as a 3D hologram without using a true 3D scanner. This makes the conferencing faster so you don’t have a lag between the adoring public and Max Headroom.

Now, while ICT has managed to create a great way of viewing a 3D image, the use of a high speed rotating mirror has negated any possibility of getting close to the hologram. I’d really love to see the combination of the tactile holography we discussed before (also seen at SIGGRAPH) and 3D object projection as seen with ICT. That would open up a really great opportunity for full-body holographic telepresence. Right now, however, trying to touch an ICT image would likely get your finger chopped off. Not so good.

Also, while the teleconference head can make eye-contact, which is huge, it is still prone to glitches. Vertical tracking allows people at different heights to see the corresponding correct portion of the face, but see if you notice how certain parts of the face seem to cut in and out during the videos above. ICT may need some upgrades in computer processing speeds and projector resolution before these artifacts are corrected.

While ICT’s head hologram has some amazing features that far exceed traditional teleconferencing, I’m not sure it’s going to catch on. You need a special setup and special recording equipment to get it to work. It may be a select few who are willing to make such an investment when you can use a $150 monitor and a $50 webcam to accomplish a 2D version. The 360° image viewing may catch on for object modeling, but again, that’s not a guarantee. I think the biggest promise of this technology may be that it shows how many approaches there are to creating realistic 3D images. Some day we’re going to have lifelike real time holograms – there’s too many paths for them all to fail. Which is good news for those of us who have underlings we need to impress. Come my Singularity Hub interns, gaze upon my floating head and FEAR ME!

Wireframe 3D hologram of a Tie Fighter... Can't Breathe...Geek...Overload

Lots of lasers and stuff...

The idea behind it is fairly simple.  Well, as simple as one can get when lasers are involved.  The laser scans the object and takes a 3D snapshot of the face, employing the devilishly tricky wave-particle duality theories to get 400 data samples per square inch.  The computer then automatically takes the data points and strings them together to make a 3D computer model that is easily imported into other CAD software.

Depending on how big the item is, a couple of scans at different angles might be required.  That might sound daunting but, with the visual editing software that comes bundled with the package, it’s a cinch.  What, you say?  Too lazy to go through and put your own 3D scans together into one image?  Then sit back and let the AutoPositioner automatically move the sample.  No, serious.  It’s pretty neat.  Check it out in the video below.

NextEngine says it takes about two minutes to complete a scan and that about 12 scans will get an article fully scanned.  Call it about a half hour to cheat reality?  That seems like a win for NextEngine.  They also claim that, at a price of only $3000, their scanner can operate better than the competition at a tenth of the cost to the consumer.  Things just seem to be getting better for the company.  They’ve even got Jay Leno on their case.  Check that out below as he scans a broken part and creates a new one out of plastic using a 3D printer.  The scan is so good that they even scanned an adjustable wrench and, after printing it out in plastic, it was fully workable.

3D printing has been around for quite a while, but this type of scanning is not as old hat.  But it is yet another way that humans can interact with computers and bring the two worlds closer together.  That pairing of man and machine is exactly what the future holds.  So, there’s no brain-interlink to make it so the user no longer needs to press buttons.  Who cares?  This scanner can turn the tangible into the digital.

Combining the 3D scanning technologies with 3D printing allows for objects to flow freely between the real world and that of computers in ways that only thoughts and ideas could flow previously.  Yes, parts have been designed on the computer and fabricated in real life for quite some time now, but this is the beginning of an age where anybody can bring a 3D object into their computer, edit it to suit their needs, and print it back out in a fully functioning form.  3D printing might not be perfect yet, but it seems that 3D scanning is already getting there.

The dome from outside, looking like a scene from one of the Myst games. Photo courtesy of UCSB

In the early days of science, checking out your data was easy: there wasn’t very much of it. Collecting data was the hard part; analyzing and cataloging it was a relatively straightforward affair.  But the times, they are a-changin’. Nowadays, complex research can spit out mountains of data, making analysis a confounding and time-consuming process. Plus, it can be pretty boring. That is, unless you have an AlloSphere handy.

The AlloSphere is a data presentation instrument – environment, really – that allows researchers to explore complex datasets in a fully immersive audiovisual environment. It is composed of two 5-meter radius hemispheres with a catwalk along the middle for researchers to stand on. From this perspective, they can watch visual representations of their data surround them, whether they are interested in neural activity or quantum fields. At the same time, other data can be represented in audio form, making the data exploration a multimedia affair. And to top it off, it’s real-time responsive, letting users manipulate the data they look at.

To get an idea for its broad applications (and to see it in action) check out this amazing video from this year’s TED conference:

Developed over the process of twenty four years, the AlloSphere is housed at UC Santa Barbara’s California NanoSystems Institute building. Its unique construction provides a 360 degree visual field for data to be presented, projected onto the hemispheres by video projectors. About 500 speakers are placed around the sphere, providing 3D sound to accompany the visual display. It takes up a 3-story cube, surrounded with sound absorption material so that audio doesn’t echo. The catwalk can fit from 20-30 people inside at a time, so your whole chemistry class can take a field trip.

So what kinds of data does the AlloSphere accommodate? Physicists seemed to have jumped right on board, using the system to visualize hydrogen bonding and quantum mechanical wavefunctions. Another project is working to provide a 3D visualization of nanoscale structures (yes, with the silly glasses) that a user can interact with and manipulate. My favorite is the AlloBrain, which lets the user navigate macroscopic fMRI datasets and hear blood flow in the brain as audio. Heck, they’re even trying to get Google Earth running on this thing.

The AlloSphere in action. Photo courtesy of UCSB

Got some ideas for the AlloSphere? They’re open to suggestions. The hardware is all up and running, and they’re looking for new software ideas to explore the possibilities of how their new toy can be applied. Their doors are open to art projects, green technology, nanotech, national defense applications, medical breakthroughs, psychologists, physicists, educators, you name it. If you’ve got a cool idea that could use a little audiovisual immersion, the Allosphere is listening. I personally promote a Pink Floyd laser light show, but that’s just me.

The AlloSphere gives scientists an innovative way to look at their data, hopefully inspiring a few “eureka” moments along the way. It also makes science really cool, engaging young students by bringing lofty concepts back down to earth and into an IMAX style presentation. We’re getting a glimpse into the future of how technology can help us to experience and explore scientific data, making it beautiful and engaging (not to mention educational).

And now, back to writing my own proposal.  Prepping next year’s tax return is gonna be a blast. Hopefully.

Want to join Star Fleet and take a tour of the Enterprise? Couldn’t be simpler: go to Experience the Enterprise, fire up your webcam and print out the special page the program prompts you for. Iphone users can forgo the printing and use a special webpage display instead. Activate the Active X software at the prompt and you’re good to go. As always, Total Immersion’s AR tech blends streaming video and pre-recorded images in real-time to produce an eye-popping effect. Check out the demo video:

Paramount and J.J. Abrams have been working over-time to convince the movie-going public that you don’t have to be a hard-core Star Trek fan to enjoy the movie. (I am a hard-core fan, and I did enjoy the movie, btw) The “Experience the Enterprise” website is a nice step in that direction. Even if you’ve never heard of Star Trek before, the free AR demo would be too cool to pass up. It’s one of the first, if not the first, free AR programs that you can access online and try out for yourself. Did I mention that it was easy to get to work and totally free? Stop petting your tribble, put your 3D chess game on hold, invite the Orion ambassador over and check it out!

Somewhere between the harshness of reality and the fantasy of virtual reality lies the domain of Augmented Reality (AR). The French company Total Immersion‘s AR technology uses camera capture and 3D imaging techniques to blend surrounding and simulated environments in real-time. You’ve probably seen the videos floating around You Tube — people hold simple pieces of paper up to their web cameras and suddenly cool cars or a baseball player appear on the screen, seemingly right on top of the paper. The mash of real and virtual gives the illusion that both are occurring in the same space. One look at these stunning effects and you have a hard time believing it’s real, which it isn’t, and you can’t help wanting to learn more. If you haven’t seen the videos already, check out what you’re missing below:

AR videos have been making the rounds on the Internet recently in part due to their nearly seamless blending of the captured and constructed images. Without this real-time blending, Augmented Reality would be completely redundant with the CGI movies that have been coming out of Hollywood for years. With the real-time blending, Total Immersion has opened the door for interaction between the audience and virtual environment. That interactive ability is what will transform AR from a novelty to a world-wide phenomenon.

Augmented Reality from Total Immersion works on a simple concept: blend captured video and artificial 3D objects in real-time.

Some companies are predisposed to benefit from the AR technology.

Collectible trading card games and sports memorabilia have jumped at the chance for interactive collectibles. Topps (the baseball card giant) launched AR products in March, shown in this demonstration video:

The Reality of the Situation

In the short term, AR will primarily be seen in two venues: interactive marketing and extended-content media. Interactive marketing has already proven useful: Focus Feature’s stop motion movie Coraline used an advertising campaign (in selected cities) where people on the street could see themselves with button eyes. General Electric’s new web campaign,  plug into the smart grid, allows users to explore their new energy solutions using AR. Extended-content media will encompass all the books, DVD cases, and other merchandise that will boost sales by including interactive AR portions. Already, Total Immersion is working with childrens’ books publishers to create products that can either be read as normal books or read along side the computer for interactive stories.

Total Immersion has developed marker-less tracking for its camera capture software. This means that any object (not just specially tagged objects) can be viewed and augmented. In the future, your mobile phone could take a picture of any object and provide information or overlapping video as you desire. Already, advertising applications are being implemented so that you can take a snapshot of a product you see and have its purchasing information appear instantly on your mobile device.

Total Immersion and AR will soon bring you the next level of Pokemon and collectible card games.

In the long term, AR is a solid step to closing the gap between watching and experiencing content. Already Total Immersion has teamed up with Futuroscope (a French amusement park) and created an interactive attraction that projects artificial zoos right before your eyes. The next step will be to take the technology out of the entertainment industry and into the information age. Imagine wearing special glasses that show the height, weight, and costs of objects you see. Or, you could sit in a car and have hazards highlighted on your windshield and maps appear on the road ahead of you. As cameras become smaller and clearer, your biological eyes could be enhanced with AR images and informatics. Military applications for AR are plentiful: assisted aiming, tactical information on targets, comparing faces to known-combatant lists, etc.

All this potential from a company that is still building after 10 years. Starting in 1999, founders Bruno Uzzan and Valentin Lefevre developed AR from an idea into a successful international company. And they continue to grow, with a new office in Los Angeles. For those who doubt that Total Immersion and AR will extend beyond a mere novelty, let me point out that some of the first applications for AR were in model design and simulation for BMW and GM. While Total Immersion may have come to your attention for its cool videos and customer interactivity “wow” factor, its future is likely to be much more impressive. AR is going to make our world a little less real and a lot more virtual.

Many will be surprised to learn that the first patents and the first working versions of 3D movies were created more than 100 years ago!  Yet only now, after several false starts, does it appear that the era of 3D movies may finally have arrived.  For futurists and technology enthusiasts, the story of 3D movies is a reminder that exciting technologies that seem just around the corner can actually be a long way off.

This year will see the production of an unprecedented number of high quality, large budget 3D movies from several big name studios.  Most notable is the announcement that Dreamworks, the studio behind Shrek, Madagascar, and the highly anticipated March release of the animated movie “Monsters vs. Aliens”, has pledged to make all of its movies in 3D from now on.

According to Reuters:

Major 3-D releases for 2009 include “Up” on May 29 from Disney-Pixar, “Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs” on July 1 from News Corp’s 20th Century Fox, and director James Cameron’s “Avatar,” also from Fox and in theatres on December 18.  All told, at least 40 big budget 3D movies are slated for the next 3 years.

Not only are big name studios spending big money to create these 3D movies, but movie theaters are finally making the expensive investments required to upgrade their equipment to show the movies.  Again, from Reuters:

1,700 3-D screens exist, up from less than 1,000 six months ago, said Patrick Corcoran, director of media and research for The National Association of Theatre Owners.  Converting the vast majority of the 38,900 screens in the U.S. will cost $2 billion, he said.

Although there were several moments during the last 100 years when 3D movies seemed just on the horizon, widespread adoption never occurred because the technology was never able to shake off some serious problems.

Most notable is that until recently the technology has been plagued by a terrible user experience.  3D movies have long been criticized for inducing headaches in their viewers.  Furthermore, limitations in the technology meant that the movie was unwatchable when viewed at an angle, such as from the side of a theater or when lying one’s head on the shoulder of a loved one.

User experience aside, the industry has also been unable to overcome the “chicken and egg” problem in regards to investment.  Producers would not invest in 3D movies because there were no theaters to show them in.  Theaters would not invest money to equip themselves for 3D movies because there weren’t many 3D movies to show.

Now after significant improvements to the technology, the user experience has been perfected.  Headaches are no longer a problem and today’s 3D movies can be viewed from practically any angle.  Meanwhile, movie producers and movie theaters seem to have overcome their inability to invest.  The result is an explosion of 3D offerings for 2009 that may reshape the entire movie landscape for the benefit of industry players and for viewers.

If you haven’t seen a 3D movie in theaters lately, chances are that you will soon.

Want to learn more?  Check out these excellent sources that were used for this story:

NPR recently did a segment on 3D movies here

Wikipedia: 3-D Film

Reuters: Recession blurs outlook for 3-D movie expansion

A company called Shapeways allows you to upload a 3D design to their website and then days later they will mail you a real life fabrication of your design.  Shapeways offers a cool service that has previously been expensive and hard to find for the average consumer.  More notably, Shapeways is an example of the merger between the physical world and the digital world that is underway.

Today the physical world and the digital world are completely separate realms, but this will likely change in the future.  One day it may be possible to take a person and convert them completely into digital form with no further need for their physical body.  Conversely, it may be possible for an artificial intelligence entirely created through software and digital bits to be transferred into physical form.  This will sound crazy to many readers, yet substantial theoretical work dubbed “it from bits” suggests that physical objects and digital objects are both the same thing – information.  The Center for Bits and Atoms, lead by Neil Gershenfeld is doing some very exciting work in this field.

Star Trek style replication is still likely a far off achievement for us, but companies like Shapeways are examples of the tiny steps we are making in what may be a steady march towards a unification of the physical and digital worlds.  One day you might in essence email somebody a real physical object, such as food or a car.  The email would contain the digital recipe describing the entire information content of the object (its atoms, the location of the atoms, the interconnection of atoms, etc.) and some sort of logic at the other end would convert this digital recipe into the real world physical object.  If you still don’t believe it, then remind yourself that only 3 billion base pairs of information called DNA is what was needed to make you!

Image from “Petunia” model at shapeways gallery