World’s Most Ambitious Re-Creation of Prehistoric Cave Art to Open
Designers took 6,000 photos and spent 680 hours laser scanning every crack and crevice of Chauvet's chambers, floor to ceiling.
From the data collected, they created a high-fidelity digital copy of the cave. The scans, at 16 pixels per square millimeter, are so detailed that in many ways they provide a better view than a visitor could experience walking through Chauvet itself. Once the scanning was complete, more than 80 sections of the cave were snipped from the immense file and pieced together virtually, as if they were a 3-D puzzle, to make a smaller, but still impressive, amalgam.
Once these "bones" were in place, another team mounted a metal mesh on them, which was then sprayed with a foam mortar. Next a coat of cement was troweled on, and workers, painters, sculptors, and geologists worked each surface until it precisely matched the original cave's walls. Gaps were left for the limestone panels of artwork that Tosello was puzzling over that fall day in his studio.
Re-creating the experience of the original was paramount, said Clément. The replica's temperature will even match the original cave's. When I entered one finished section, it was difficult to distinguish from the real chamber that I'd been lucky enough to explore earlier the same day. All that work is now drawing to a close. After nearly three years of furious construction, Pont-d'Arc Cave will open on April 25, 2015.
See the full story here: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/12/141219-chauvet-paleolithic-cave-art-paintings-france-ancient-culture/
3D Printed Electronic Devices Are Coming
Voxel8’s new 3D printer, which can print functioning electronic devices all in one piece, heralds just such a radical possibility. It should be noted that Voxel8’s printer can’t print every component yet. But that doesn’t lessen its significance.
How does it work? In one sense, just like your standard 3D printer, the device is guided by digital modeling software to build shapes out of consecutive layers of plastic. When instructed, the printer pauses and a second print nozzle lays down highly conductive circuits while the operator pops in key components like processor, battery, and motors.
In either case, it'll be one disruptive technology disrupting another. Why, for example, would Foxconn need to replace humans assembling iPhones with industrial robots, if the manufacturing and assembly process was radically simplified by advanced 3D printers? Or, eventually, perhaps we won't need a big, centralized manufacturing hub like Foxconn at all.
See the full story here: http://singularityhub.com/2015/01/15/3d-printed-electronic-devices-are-coming/
Hershey-Backed 3D Chocolate Printer In The Works
3D Systems and The Hershey Company have been collaborating on the CocoJet, a 3D printer that uses melted chocolate as its building material. Users can pick between dark, milk, or white chocolate and can print preprogrammed shapes or make new ones. And then eat them!
The printer isn’t currently available, but 3D System’s ChefJet printer is set to be released in the second half of 2015. That particular machine spits out three-dimensional sugar, chocolate, or candy confections, so it stands to reason that CocoJet could follow a similar path to market.
Read the full story here: http://www.ohgizmo.com/2015/01/22/hershey-backed-3d-chocolate-printer-works/
Microsoft’s New Idea: A Hologram Headset to Rewrite Reality
Microsoft today showed off an augmented reality headset slated for release later this year. The compact, visor-style device, called Hololens, generates holograms that make 3-D objects appear to the wearer to be overlaid on the real world.
Depth sensors in the device mean that virtual objects can be interactive and integrate smoothly into the real world. For example, a virtual game character could appear to be sitting on your coffee table, and respond to a prodding finger. Headphones built into the device can also give the impression that virtual objects are producing sound, even if they are behind you.
“We’re not talking about putting you into virtual worlds,” said Alex Kipman, a technical fellow at Microsoft who worked on Hololens, and previously led development of the Kinect depth-sensing game controller. “Holograms behave just like real-world objects.”
Nothing was said about how Microsoft had made the technology so compact, or how long its battery life might last on a charge. The device’s sensors and complex functions could use a lot of power. Kipman said that the device has general purpose and graphics processor chips, as well as a new “holographic processing” chip developed to handle calculations involved in displaying holograms.
ESPN Deploys Drone to Cover Winter X-Games
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...After much due diligence, ESPN settled on Vortex Aerial in Los Angeles.
See the full story here: http://www.tvtechnology.com/news/0086/espn-deploys-drone-to-cover-winter-x-games/274228
Pirating the 2015 Oscars
Author stats on piracy from all sources.
MPAA stats on piracy from screens
Along with the official U.S. and Oscar screener release dates, I include the leak dates for each major way that films typically find their way online:
- Cam. The old standby, a handheld camera in a theater. The worst quality, and increasingly uncommon.
- Telesync. Typically, a cam with better audio, often from headphone jacks in theater seats intended as hearing aids.
- Telecine, R5, PPV, Webrip, and HDRips. The terminology and sourcing’s changed through the years, but these are all high-quality rips with solid audio and video. (Generally speaking, Telecines were ripped from original prints distributed to theaters, R5 from “Region 5” DVDs sent to other regions to combat piracy, PPV from advanced pay-per-view sources, Webrip from early online releases like iTunes, and HDRip from a variety of sources, but typically from HDTV.)
- Screener. Great quality, usually intended for media or competition review, but can leak at any point in the distribution chain, often with watermarks intact. (As Ellen DeGeneres knows well.)
- Retail. A rip from the official retail release.
See the full story here: https://medium.com/message/pirating-the-2015-oscars-hd-edition-6c78e0cb471d
Microsoft Reveals Windows Holographic, An Augmented Reality User Interface For The World
Microsoft revealed a version of Windows that blends holograms with real world video to provide users with an augmented reality version of their environment that blends real objects with virtual, and virtual interface elements, information boxes and guidelines viewable via a wearable headset device.Hologram support in Microsoft’s Windows 10 software is universal, just like their new app infrastructure, which means that you can build once and use everywhere. Microsoft also pointed out that they’re working to help make this compatible with all kinds of emerging hardware on that horizon, including Oculus Rift, and Magic Leap – but they also revealed Microsoft HoloLens, a new in-house headset that will be available “within the Windows 10 timeframe.”
HoloLens is completely wireless, and features see-through lenses, spatial sound and advanced sensors. It’s designed to be a self-contained unit, and it has its own custom CPU and new Holographic Processing Unit (HPU) to work. It doesn’t even require a phone or computer to connect to wirelessly to work, and is meant to be completely independent.
See the full story here: http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/21/microsoft-reveals-windows-holographic-an-augmented-reality-user-interface-for-the-world/
UploadVR World Tour Kickoff Happens Tonight, Catch the Panel Livestreams
UploadVR is marking the start of an 11 city international tour of VR enthusiast gatherings tonight with a VR World Tour Kickoff event in San Francisco. Can’t make it? The panel discussions will be livestreamed.
UploadVR, as their website states, is a “community of pioneers inspiring people around the world to spread the magic of virtual reality.”
Sponsors of the event include Samsung, Razer, Sixense, DODOcase, Leap Motion, NextVR and other players in the consumer VR industry.
The next cities on the world tour will be Seattle, LA, DC, Boston, New York, Vancouver, London, Amsterdam, Paris and Berlin. No dates for those stops have been released just yet.
See the full story here, including a list of speakers and demos - http://www.roadtovr.com/uploadvr-world-tour-kickoff-event-san-francisco-panel-livestream/
CastAR: Hands-On with the Early Dev Kit and Through-Glasses Gameplay (Video)
castAR is a technology that uses dual projectors to project a 720p, stereoscopic image onto special, retro-reflective material allowing you to see the projected game-world in front of you in 3D. The practical upshot of this is, you can throw a retro-reflective sheet onto any surface, vertical, horizontal or otherwise. Even cleverer though, if you add a friend with their own pair of castAR glasses, when they put them on and stare at the same surface they receive their own view of the game. The surfaces property mean that light is reflected back to the source, i.e. the user.
As I got to grips with my marble’s (stop sniggering at the back) handling characteristics, I consciously stooped and peered into the scene, trying to throw off the tracking. It was pretty solid, only breaking when I dropped below the surface of the table, where the marker sat.
Although the team won’t be drawn on exactly when that shipping date will be, it’s fairly clear that they’re unlikely to ship anything until they’re completely happy with the product.
castAR remains a unique and exciting hardware platform for gaming, with a truly social focus on multiplayer and potentially family based activities seemingly it’s real forte. The nature or AR means you’re less isolated from other players - the potential for castAR to replace activities such as traditional board-gaming for example is enticing.