Tuesday, December 10, 2002 |
11:13 - The Future's Still the Future
http://www.star.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/projects/MEDIA/xv/oc.html
|
(top) |
James Bond technology is still a bit further out of our reach than I think we've cynically grown to believe. (Isn't that a weird idea-- we've grown cynical of progress, enough so that intelligent people tell me quite seriously that nobody actually works on animated movies anymore, because "they're all done with computers nowadays"-- and people in France and Muslim nations believe the US fabricated all those videos of planes crashing on 9/11 and OBL gloating about it afterwards?)
Some researchers in Japan, in a site forwarded to me by Judson, are working on "optical camouflage"-- which, if I'm reading the site correctly, amounts to placing cameras and partial mirrors in a room such that a projector can "paint" an object with the image of whatever's behind it, regardless of how the object is positioned. (The site is precious sparse in explanatory text, so I can't tell if the object has to be coated in a special reflective substance, or what. Either way, the projection doesn't override the object's natural colors or lighting or anything.)
The "Die Another Day" car is still at least a few months away, it seems.
|
|