Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Augmented Virtuality for Processes

Google Earth with real time updates is now a possibility in the near future, with research being performed at Georgia Tech. A nice YouTube video is shown here of research into augmenting 3D Google Earth locations with camera updates, that are processed to show pedestrian and car movements in an area.

This is useful for showing process information updates in real time in a virtual setting.

We can now see that the various representation spaces for information: virtual world, image/video and augmented reality, seem to be heading towards a unified whole representation. Such a multi-space can be used to freely move in an out of 3D representations as we see fit, or to embed one within another - eg. Second Life as a 3D rendering on your physical desk using Augmented Reality technology.

So, the console view of your company's information, may indeed be spatially laid out in future, within a world visualisation like Google Earth.

Ross

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Kant and the Art of Visualisation

I often think of Kant's ideas of the sublime while I muse about Visualisation and Computer Graphics. In short, Sublime is the feeling when in the presence of something that invokes awe, and may be akin to religious experience. I spoke at MS Tech.Ed on the Gold Coast, Qld just this Tuesday about the same thing. Computer Graphics has a peculiar place in Computer Science, along with maybe Audio Signal Processing, in that we can create algorithms that have a direct emotional impact on the viewer.

I like to tell my Real-time Rendering Students at QUT that their job is to create imagery that evokes an enjoyable experience in the player/viewer.

BTW, just found a blog on Beautiful Visualisation. Go have a read, it looks good, maybe even sublime...

Ross