Friday, August 17, 2007

Virtual Parks++ ?

We are building up steam to launch a project which involves solving parts of the plenoptic function for natural landmarks. The current state of the art for field capture of interactive scene data seems to be capturing cylindrical panoramos using rotating heads on tripods: http://www.virtualparks.org/

Imagine doing the same thing, but supporting non-deforming geometry, novel viewpoints and relighting. Now imagine putting all that technology in a package with free software and sub $10,000 capitol equipment cost and giving it to the kind of people who go record this stuff for fun in their free time.

One concern is that the experience becomes to "Disneyland". That is, the resulting immersive environment is so compelling and complete that the visitor wonders "why bother with all the walking? I've already seen it here on my TV." I read that the other way. I think "now that I've got a glipse of the place, I am highly motivated to protect it and to get out there and experience it for real."

We need to think more carefully about this issue.

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