Is virtual reality the future of news?
Three companies today launched virtual reality-enabled news documentaries, hoping that the 360-degree films can lure back people turned off by conventional news.
What is holographic, and what isn’t?
[Philip Lelyveld comment: this is a nice academic discussion that argues we should define holographic by the experience, not the technology.]
When viewing close-by objects, there are six major depth cues that help us perceive three dimensions:
- Perspective foreshortening: farther away objects appear smaller
- Occlusion: nearer objects hide farther objects
- Binocular parallax / stereopsis: left and right eyes see different views of the same objects
- Monocular (motion) parallax: objects shift depending on how far away they are when head is moved
- Convergence: eyes cross when focusing on close objects
- Accommodation: eyes’ lenses change focus depending on objects’ distances
See the full story here: http://doc-ok.org/?p=1172
Cheap Printable DNA Gets Major Funding Boost
San Francisco-based start-up Cambrian Genomics has received $10 million in funding to realize their science fiction vision of making 3D printable DNA an affordable consumer item. Making DNA and selling it will be easier for the company now that they challenge the expenses involved. C
reating one set of human chromosomes by traditional printing methods can cost billions of dollars, but Cambrian Genomics uses laser printers to sort DNA strands (the costly time consuming requirement). Lasers aid the sorting process, significantly cutting down time, rendering the 3D printing of DNA more of a household activity where anyone can be a genetic designer. Forget mice with human ears attached, people. CEO Austen Heinz is talking 3D printing dinosaurs.
See the source story here: http://3dprint.com/39245/stories-we-missed-january-24/
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