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Tron Legacy Trailer Released With Daft Punk Sound Score

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by Keith Kleiner on March 10th, 2010

The cult classic movie Tron from 1982 is set to get a facelift this year with the release of a sequel movie called Tron Legacy.  The second trailer for the movie was released yesterday, featuring gorgeous imagery and a highly anticipated sound score from geek favorite French electronic music duo Daft Punk.  Jeff Bridges, who played the role of computer hacker genius Kevin Flynn from the original Tron, returns to Tron Legacy alongside his now grow up son, Sam.  It is encouraging that Steven Lisberger, director of the original Tron, will be contributing to Tron Legacy as a producer.  Be sure to check out the latest trailer and the earlier teaser trailer- multiple times – after the break. Plus a bonus: a video of the trailer for the original Tron from 1982.

Tron Legacy Looks Pretty Sweet

Like most of the big films being released recently, Tron will be available in 3D.  With Tron’s signature high speed lightcycle chases, glowing disk projectile weaponry, and a simulated digital universe the film is ripe for some 3D awesomeness. Read More

Avatar Movie Thrills In London Premier, Portends Future

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by Keith Kleiner on December 16th, 2009
Avatar Movie an animation marvel?

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.

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Glasses To Project Images Directly Into Retina Terminator Style

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by Keith Kleiner on October 26th, 2009

rid-augmented-reality-vision

Brother Industries, Ltd. has just announced that next year it plans to produce Retinal Imaging Display (RID) glasses that augment regular vision.  Just as in the popular Terminator movies, these glasses could project supplemental information into your field of vision to augment your normal vision.  Although Brother and most of the blogosphere is hyping that the product will be ready by 2010, I am skeptical.  Even if they do appear in 2010, will the quality and form factor of the glasses be reasonable?  I doubt it.  Augmented reality sent directly into our retinas is certainly on the horizon, and its going to be awesome…but the technology still needs several more years of innovation before it is ready to break out.  In the meantime, we can wet our imaginations with what is to come.

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Virtual Reality at SIGGRAPH

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by Aaron Saenz on August 26th, 2009

Oh my goodness, this world looks vaguely interesting!

Oh my goodness, this world looks vaguely interesting!

With the amazing video recording and production systems commercially available, how hard can it be to create a realistic virtual reality environment? I mean, all we really need are some cameras, some computers, and a video screen, right? Well, Virtualization Gate, a new project from the INRIA and Grenoble University in France, debuted at SIGGRAPH in early August. Apparently realistic VR is harder than it looks. Or maybe everything else we encounter, cutting edge video games, CGI films, and high definition projectors, just make VR seem less real than we would like. Check out the Virtualization Gate demo video after the break and marvel at their big green room of goodness.

What Virtualization Gate does well is track the user’s motion. A system of multiple cameras, a PC cluster, and a head mounted display (HMD) the size of Sputnik are used in conjunction to place the user precisely in the virtual world. With 20 frames per second, the VR graphics actually appear to move reasonably well in real time. This allows our demonstration gamer to kick over some urns, push around a virtual copy of himself, and even stare at his VR avatar in the mirror. Not bad, VGate, but not mind-blowing.

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Forget Paint, Turn The Side of Your Building into a Video Screen

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by Aaron Saenz on August 10th, 2009

Bored by your office’s cold clammy exterior? Then you need to get a hold of the guys at Urbanscreen. This German company uses enormous projectors and a lot of design skill to transform cityscapes into mind blowing art installations. Their latest project in Hamburg adorned an art museum (the Kunsthalle) and had crowds cheering and applauding on the streets. Cheering an art installation? Either Germans are crazier than I thought or Urbanscreen has hit on something big. Watch the video after the break and judge for yourself (cheering not included).

Say goodbye to boring buildings with enormouse art installations from Urbanscreen

Say goodbye to boring buildings with art installations from Urbanscreen

If this trend catches on, we could see entire cities changed at night into evolving art spaces. With the sagging economy, artists are clamoring for grants and jobs…so why not combine that need with a little urban renewal? The Kunsthalle installation was based on the question: “What would a building dream?” That sounds esoteric, but the project came out very crowd-pleasing. A city-wide project might have the same great combination of artistic merit and public appeal. And it would certainly boost tourism.

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Haptics Unleashes Virtual Reality and Telepresence Revolution

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by Keith Kleiner on July 31st, 2009
Exohand Haptic Hand

Exohand - Its Haptic Baby!

Prepare to be blown away with this post!  Here at the Hub one of the things that we are all about is the coming merger of the physical world with the virtual world.  Programmable matter, moving beyond the outdated mouse and keyboard interface model, immersive environments, and so on.  Now we are here to tell you about a seriously game changing technology that is absolutely busting apart the traditional barrier between the physical and virtual worlds.  Its called haptics, and if you haven’t heard about it yet then read on and prepare to be thrilled.

Dramatic opening paragraph, I know, but I am just so excited about the possibilities of haptics that it is hard for me to hold back.  Haptics is the set of technologies that causes a person operating a device to engage in a sensory feedback loop between what the device is feeling and seeing and what the person is feeling and seeing.  Sound confusing?  Keep reading, it will make sense!

Today most graphics designers draw things on a computer the old fashioned way using the mouse and keyboard to interface with their design software.  Haptics changes all of this.  Imagine instead of a mouse that you have a wand or joystick that can serve as your paintbrush, eraser, scalpel, etc as you design an object on the computer.  As you push down on the virtual object you are designing on the computer with your joystick you can actually feel pressure push back on you from the joystick.  Its a completely different way of graphics design that will rewrite the rules of the game.  Speaking of games, haptics also has the potential to revolutionize the gaming industry. Check out this video to see what I am talking about:

After watching the video hopefully you agree that this is some pretty cool stuff!  To fully grasp the potential of this disruptive technology, you have to keep in mind that the haptic device you are controlling does not have to be in the same physical location as the object, game, or target you are manipulating.

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Enter the AlloSphere: a 360° Audiovisual Research Dome

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by Drew Halley on May 14th, 2009

“Data analysis.” Sounds exciting, right? Most of us would sooner put out an eye than crunch some numbers. But what if you could trade in that Excel spreadsheet for a giant, 360 degree visual sphere with a kickin’ sound system? Science just got a whole lot trippier.

Photo courtesy of UCSB

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.

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