New Augmented Reality Technology Lets You INTERACT with Videos / Games!
Augmented Reality has taken over regular gaming by storm.
Games like "Pokemon Go", that are a mixture between real life and virtual objects, seem to be the new trend - together with Virtual Reality systems, that make you feel like you are in a completely different world.
But combining both worlds, real and virtual, hasn't always been very easy.
Hollywood can do it with a million dollar budget, but now, a new technology will revolutionize the industry:
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has just discovered a new method called "Interactive Dynamic Video".
The technology works by recording a short clip of your environment with a regular camera.
Then, the software analyzes the vibrations, and can therefore calculate how the object would naturally move if you were to touch it or interact with it.
This short video explains and demonstrates the technology:
So this means that you could interact with any game or any movie you watch.
Just imagine looking at a picture of a beautiful landscape, and you could poke and push the flowers - and they would actually respond to your action!
If this was integrated into a game like Pokemon Go, it could become much more realistic: The Pokemon could hide under a table or jump on a bush which shakes in return, or a Poke-Ball could bounce off a tree etc.
This would add another dimension to our gaming experience!
Of course, the technology is not quite ready yet to be implemented on such a large scale, but it's a possibility for the future.
This is how it might look like if Pokemon Go was equipped with Interactive Dynamic Video:
As you can see, it makes the virtual characters appear to be much more realistic, because they are actually interacting with your environment.
Abe Davis, student at the MIT and inventor of the software, developed it as a part of his PhD dissertation.
Although he hasn't initiated any commercial uses yet, this technology could soon revolutionize the Entertainment industry.
Currently, big Hollywood Productions let their virtual characters interact with the real world by adding a lot of virtual elements.
In the video above, the example of Jurassic Park is shown: Movies like that are being filmed in a relatively empty environment.
Then, the dinosaur gets added in virtually, along with lots of virtual plants that he can then tread down.
That means a lot of work for the editors!
But with IDV, you could just film in an environment with real plants, and manipulate their movements afterwards with a few clicks.
IDV could also be used to find out how an object would react under certain conditions, without the dangers of actually testing it.
For example: It could be calculated how buildings would react/move in the event of an earthquake, and according to that Data architects could improve their work to make the building more stable and safe.
Davis has actually also talked about his revolutionary new technology in a TED Talk, explaining how it works in detail:
Obviously, this new IDV technology is still far from being implemented in mainstream Entertainment products, but it's definitely an interesting new way of Augmented Reality that might be used a lot in future gaming and film making.
I guess my kids will have lots of fun with new technologies like this one!
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© Sirwinchester
I've been enthusiastic about AR for years now and I believe my excitement is justified by the recent popularity of the AR Pokemon Go craze. At first glance, I was not impressed with Abe Davis' software. It seemed like an artificial manipulation. Nonetheless, after watching his TEDtalk and digesting the ideas, I think he is on to something.
From a physicist's point of view, it's all vibrations; waves of energy interacting across the cosmos. These waves make up our reality at different levels; on the solar system level with Earth revolving around the sun periodically, the potato chip bag vibrating in Abe Davis' experiment, invisible oscillations on the atomic level. Of course, one part of his experiment is old hat; lasers pointed at window panes to listen to conversations inside a room is not news. However, recording subtle vibrations on a video and amplifying them to create predictive models of an object's behavior is an insight with great potential IMHO.
He did not go into this aspect of the experiment in great detail, but if we can predict behavior at the level of a shrub branch moving with stimulation why not take it further, say to the cellular level where we could focus radio waves on organelles to cure diseases. While far fetched, the concept would seem to have merit.
wow thanks for your input, very interesting!
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The World Economic Forum at Davos in 2016 had a bunch of talks I covered in the below video on where this alternate reality is all heading, it is called the direct neural interface. Their stated plans, in their own words for this are all not good...
very interesting video, thanks for sharing!
@sirwinchester amazing read...especially for me from an engineering background...it will add a lot of value to simulations.
this could become a real game changer (literally) in the future!
you are right, kids of future generations will have the BEST toys and gaming equipment! they'll laugh about our pixelated Akari's and GameBoys!
The technology is going crazy ^^ Great post again!
thank you!
wow, I never thought that something like this would even be possible!
only from analyzing tiny vibrations, that's awesome!
that sounds like an awesome software, thanks for sharing! We'll see where this technology takes us
crazy how a student just casually discovered this, hahaha! this could totally transform the world of augmented reality