Interview: Lightform’s exciting new tech can turn anything around you into a screen
Back when he was at Disney Imagineering eight years ago, Brett Jones saw a demo of projected augmented reality that he thought was one of the coolest things he’d ever seen. It featured an entire enchanted forest set covered in projection, with lightning and rain, fluttering butterflies and running waterfall.
The problem, though, was the demo cost millions of dollars, and only Disney could build it. That started an idea in Jones’ head — an idea to try to help make that technology more ubiquitous.
Fast forward to today, and he’s on the road to doing so. Jones is the co-founder and CEO of Lightform, a company developing a computer made specifically for AR.
The device Lightform is developing is a computer and 3D scanning device. When connected to a video projector, it lets you scan complex scenes fast and turn basically any object into a screen. AR without a headset, as the company puts it.
The basic technology behind the company’s computer is known as projection mapping. The Lightform team’s experience with projection mapping ranges from large-scale entertainment experiences to Ph.D. research experiments, everywhere from Disney Imagineering to Microsoft Research.
“The three founders, they were completing Ph.D.’s in human computer interaction and computer vision at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign,” said Lightform design director Phil Reyneri.
See the full story here: http://bgr.com/2017/04/28/augmented-reality-glasses-not-needed-lightform-interview/