Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: MicroSoft Illumiroom

This is topic MicroSoft Illumiroom in forum The Afterlife at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 05-02-2013, 02:59 PM:

This is mainly designed for videogames (especially the crappy first person shooters) but pay no attention to that. It works with other crap, too:

MicroSoft Illumiroom

Can you imagine how annoying this would be? It wouldn't work for someone sitting right next to you. Or if you began slouching.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 05-02-2013, 03:23 PM:

Wow. That's another one for the "dumbest things I've ever seen" list (which is growing quite fast).

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 05-02-2013, 09:08 PM:

That reminds me of a line of HDTV sets from a few years ago. They had light panels on the back of the monitor that would project light on the walls that matched the color scheme of video playing. Those TV sets came and went fast.

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 05-02-2013, 09:37 PM:

Why bother with the television?

Why not just project a large image on the whole wall of the room? You could still use the Kinect and the computer to map the image onto the wall of the room.

It seems like flying a helicopter just to cross the street.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 05-03-2013, 10:24 AM:

....and with a brand name as dumb as the product.

Posted by Aaron Garman (Member # 1653) on 05-03-2013, 11:03 AM:

I guess I'm in the minority...this could be cool if done well. It beats using 3D glasses.

AJG

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 05-03-2013, 01:05 PM:

This is (thankfully) not an actual product. It is essentially a science project at Microsoft Research. Most of the stuff that they do will never actually make it to production.

I assume that the basic concept is similar to that of some types of military aircraft simulators, where a high-resolution image is projected in the pilot's direct field of vision, while the peripheral information is projected at a very low resolution. The idea is to mimic the way in which people actually see things and to reduce the demands on computer control systems (vs. projecting a high-resolution image around the entire aircraft simulator).

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 05-03-2013, 04:22 PM:

What if the pilot turns his head or moves his eyeballs?

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 05-03-2013, 05:44 PM:

There are sensors that detect where his eyes are pointed to deal with that. (No, I don't know how it works.)

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 05-03-2013, 09:16 PM:

Seems kind of pointless to me. Just get a couple more computers. Computers that can generate those kinds of graphics and physics really don't cost that much at all. Let's say they need 10. That's still gonna be less than $50,000 in computer power. I don't think they're really saving much power because everything needs to be able to render at 100% at any given instant.

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 05-03-2013, 10:17 PM:

They bounce a beam of infrared light off the cornea and use a video camera to pick up the reflection.

http://www.trossenrobotics.com/p/RoboTurret-Vision-Tracking-Starter-Kit.aspx

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 05-09-2013, 09:16 PM:

Hmmm...continually aiming a beam of infrared light at someone's cornea -- I want to hear the legally required list of damaging side-effects that can happen to you with THAT process (which will have to be read at double speed) -- like they do with perscription drugs on TV....you know, the artritic pain pill that can relieve some joint discomfort, but possibly give you "tuberculosis, and/or various cancers or thoughts of suicide or mass murder, or heart clots which sometimes have resulted in death...be sure to consult with your doctor"...to see if suicide is right for you. :-) And people say 3D can give them eye strain!

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 05-09-2013, 09:49 PM:

Don't forget that the eye is already exposed to a lot of infrared light every day. It might have some effect but certainly nowhere near the effect of ultraviolet. Then, again, the eye is exposed to a lot of UV, as well. This is part of the eye's job.

As I understand, some of the light reflects off the cornea and some penetrates through to the lens inside the eye. Some of that light also reflects back. The infrared camera sees both of these reflections and uses them to basically triangulate the position of the eye.

Pretty neat trick, actually.

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 05-09-2013, 10:01 PM:

There is something very creepy about a machine watching what my eyes are watching. It's a slipery slope, I tell ya!

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 05-09-2013, 11:23 PM:

Perkinje images have been known since the 1800's.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purkinje_images

Think for a sec. Gaze tracking depends, not only on detecting the rotation of the eyeball, but on detecting position of the head, too.

Hold a finger up, in front of your face, look at it and keep your gaze fixed on it. Move your finger around and your eyes will rotate to follow. Now, keep your finger still and turn your head. Your head AND your eyes move. Without knowing the position of both the head and the eyes, gaze tracking is virtually impossible. Therefore, you need two tracking devices. One for the head and one for the eye.

The head tracking device would likely be a helmet with position sensors built into it. The eye tracking device would probably have to be affixed to the head tracking device because its measurements are relative to the head's measurements.

Bottom line, you would probably know if your vision is being tracked because you would have to wear some kind of headgear or some deivce would have to be attached directly to your head.

In either case, not suitable for "stealth" use.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 05-09-2013, 11:37 PM:

I still don't feel right with them trying to save a few bucks by rendering the peripheral stuff at a lower resolution. What if the pilot takes his iPhone out and snaps a picture of himself during training? The backgrounds will be a blurry undecipheral mess because of the chinsey 1980's graphics card. But when the pilot pulls out his iPhone during a REAL flight everything will be super clear. The pilot will not be prepared for this when he is posting the picture to Twitter immediately after snapping the pic and he will crash the plane into an elementary school due to his shock. All of these innocent deaths would have been prevented had the pilot been prepared for this during training.

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 05-10-2013, 01:00 PM:

What about some kind of "divide and conquer"strategy where imagery at the center of the screen is given first priority in rendering then, as the scene changes or scrolls, imagery at the edges is either rendered at a lower resolution or dropped alltogether.

Static scenes would be rendered at full resolution but dynamic scenes would be rendered only at resolutions that time allowed.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 05-10-2013, 02:14 PM:

It'd be interesting to come back to this thread (or this whole forum actually) in about 20 years to see how things have changed and how fouled-up everyone's idea of the future was!

Posted by Adam Martin (Member # 641) on 05-10-2013, 04:05 PM:

How about 14 years ago?

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 05-10-2013, 06:09 PM:

Damn we pretty much hit the nail on the head with the first two posts. I loved Mark's foreboding sunspots. I do bet someone could upload a virus into a server if they were clever enough. The only thing we really didn't mention is each movie playing locally at the projector. So the server doesn't fail and cause the entire theater to go dark.

This was before the UBB (hence the "unregistered" posts 1 minute apart which were actually made well before the date indicated). That old threaded message board was a pain.