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Technology

3D Videoconferencing Over Internet2 141

Posted by michael from the obi-wan-kenobi,-you're-my-only-hope dept.
An Anonymous Coward sent in: "Dallas Morning News reports that the Governor of Texas beamed in via "teleportation" through the Internet 2 to a group of business leaders in Richardson, while he was in Austin, Texas. Amazing.. This seems so star trek as opposed to reality. His 3d image stood before the business leaders in demonstration of the new technology by Teleportec." Apparently the company is calling this "teleportation", which seems like a misnomer to me, but it's still neat.
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3D Videoconferencing Over Internet2 More

3D Videoconferencing Over Internet2

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  • Re:Ad Campaign (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    But they could use it to teleport some hair onto his head.

  • Before you flame him: (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Condider the porn industry and its effect on the Internet in general. It's seedy, sure. It's ammo in the guns of overzealous censors, that's a given. And it plagues Slashdot (goatse.cx, anybody?).

    But it has also been one of the biggest driving forces in e-commerce and web development. In an article by Adam Grayson of SearchExtreme.com (available, http://www.dailynorthwestern.com/daily/issues/2000 /10/12/nyou/cover.shtml), Mr. Grayson says: "Of course, 'Web design' in the mid-'90s meant, in large part, adult entertainment - that's where the money was." SearchExtreme is now the most popular pornography film search engine on the 'Net.

    Take a look at the field of adult entertainment in general, as well-- most companies will tell you that a LARGE proportion of orders for videos, toys, and other goodies (body oils, etc.) come from the Internet. And that isn't just a recent development, either-- online smut dealers were some of the earliest adopters of e-commerce technologies.

    As much as we may not like the idea, the Internet is the IDEAL form of pornography distribution. It's relatively anonymous (save DoubleClick-style tracking and such), it's convenient, and the selection is ENORMOUS (especially in the niche market-- weird kinks FLOURISH online).

    As I mentioned above, porn dealers were amongst the earliest adopters of e-commerce technologies. But that's not the only tech that they embraced. Streaming video is another example. And porn sites have long had "discussion" areas, personal ads, and private chat rooms. Now, take a look at where auctions are showing up...

    I guess that what I'm trying to say is that, whether we like it or not, when this thing makes it into the home, it's going to become a porn machine for a lot of people. And the porn companies are going to comprise a LOT of business for the company producing these machines-- at least, early on. Later, it will be all about giving kiddies a holographic picture of the rainforest :-).

    So don't just write it off as a joke-- this company may have porno distributors to thank for its continued survival a few years down the road...
  • Umm... I think you gonna wake up quite a few people, and maybe find the Louvre closed. :)

    Victor
  • $70k isn't that much for such a neat technology. I could easily blow more than that on a single Sun server. It sounds like it sure beats the shit out of Netmeeting. I should if we can get one of these. :-)
  • Uhhh, go to their website and get their contact info. If you've got $70,000 burning a hole in your pocket I'm sure they'd be more than willing to set you up. Also would help if you had an I2 connection. ;-)
  • Ask, and you shall receive: CAVE Quake II [uiuc.edu]. Of course, it helps if you have the CAVE to play in. I've gotta see if we can try this at work. ;-)
  • Sure, the guy who deciphered the secrets of the bible, scored higher than anyone in his county in a school test, invented the eternal life device, proposed his "new darwinism", etc, etc, etc.

    I always visit his web site when I need a good laugh, but then I remember that everybody laughs at great geniuses at first.

    I think I will link to his homepage and get myself a free pair of rings. Well, not the One Ring, now *that* would be really usefull.
  • that dubya's scared of email [slashdot.org] and his successor is off beaming holographic images of himself around the state? I'm not really sure why, but it just sorta strikes me as amusing...
  • One big reason video phones didn't make it was because there was never enough bandwidth to make the image not suck. Internet2 doesn't have that problem :-)

    How it'll work on the Internet1 won't really be known, but I doubt it matters. This kind of data will probably be sent via private corporate VPNs anyways.

    Besides, seeing the person you're talking to is very important. If you're in business, you want to be personal when you negotiate, instead of memo or phonecall. Eye to eye communication is very important. Not even to mention the sentimental reason.. Parents will love the ability to look for themselves to see if their 18 year old college freshman has been eating enough.

    --

  • Being able to see the other party's postures and gestures is only a marginal improvement, not an earth-shattering achievement.

    Or, if you've read Infinite Jest, it's perhaps no improvement at all...
  • go to any decent sized college. I'm hooked up, I know most of the other major schools around the nation are too. Kernel downloads off university mirrors ROCK...

  • Holoportation ... this is way cool (Score:4)

    by ACK!! ( 10229 ) on Saturday April 07, 2001 @05:08PM (#308116) Journal
    Someone else called it Holoportation. I like the term but until they can get costs down its just a fun toy. This, however, has the potential of eliminating the need for business leaders to shuttle off to another city for a one day one shot meeting. This is one of the few neato toys that I have seen lately that has real true business potential.

  • Both the story and the website highlight "eye-to-eye contact" from the presenter to the audience. But from what I gather, the communication is totally one-way.

    Are there any other contradictions yet?

    Has anyone ever seen a projection into thin air? I'd like to hear about it.

  • Teleportec Website (Score:5)

    by Julius X ( 14690 ) on Saturday April 07, 2001 @04:01PM (#308119) Homepage
    Since no one has posted it yet....this could be useful.

    http://www.teleportec.com/ [teleportec.com]

    They've got flash and nonflash versions...Let's hope they can handle being Slashdotted!

    -Julius X
  • This is a little underwhelming. The real coolness that comes from a leader addressing underlings is having a giant screen [theonion.com] displaying his image at 50x normal size. Just like the guy in the "all your base" segment.

    Now, having a 3D hologram at that size would be pretty cool. Actually, it would also be cool to just do that without I2, with the guy standing in the room. Think of it - you go to see your favorite band or any speaker and it's a huge crowd. So, a 200 foot tall hologram is created above the guy and everyone watches that. That'd be sweet.

    --

  • True, but as we aren't about to get teleportation any time soon, and have good reason to believe that we never will have it, it's not like there's going to be a naming conflict in the future. This is as close to "teleportation" we'll be getting anytime in the next 30 years. (I wanted to say 50 but I'm not that brave.)
  • start using this tech with computer games or the movies!!!!
  • Perhaps not equivalent to Bell, but adding a pretty picture can make a lot of difference. Witness the difference between radio and television.

    FWIW, I'd call this tech 'teleportration'. Holoportation combines all the wrong roots and would translate to 'total move' instead of 'across image'

    Kevin Fox
    --
  • Somehow I can't see myself wanking over the latest "Street Fighter IV Alpha Turbo Tournament Plus Super Mega Twelve Way Battle For Great Justice" Machine..

  • Equivalent to Alexander Graham Bell? (Score:4)

    by RovingSlug ( 26517 ) on Saturday April 07, 2001 @05:12PM (#308125)
    From the article:
    It was a moment, Mr. Perry indicated, as significant as Alexander Graham Bell's first phone call to Thomas Watson.

    But "this technology, I happen to think, will have an even greater effect on the citizens of the world than what Mr. Bell came up with," he said.

    I am so entirely sick of this extreme chest-puffing and disrespect of actual culture-changing inventions. No, 3D video conferencing is not even close to the advent of the telephone. Acquire and apply some humility.

    The telephone gave for the first time real-time two-way communication. 3D video conferencing adds nothing to that essence except a pretty picture. It's still real-time, and it's still communication. Being able to see the other party's postures and gestures is only a marginal improvement, not an earth-shattering achievement.

    Growl.

  • Abridged from the OED:

    From the Greek tele- "afar or far off" and
    Latin transportare "to carry across". First
    found in the form "teleportation" in _Lo!_
    by C. Fort in 1931.
  • ...you're my only hope.

    I think we should all bow our heads in appreciation of Mr. Lucas, for He did use such imaging in the original Star Wars.

  • Huh? They did it. What more proof do you need?

    What they did was get a good write up in the Dallas whatever it is newspaper. That's hardly convincing evidence that they have a great product if you have any doubts about the current state of that field of technology.
  • They had this back in 1980 when they made Empire Strikes Back! Remember General Veers talking to Darth Vader or Vader talking to the Emperor? Yeah I thought so!
  • I was going to respond to the substance of your post, but your pr0n spam sig dissuaded me. Advertising pr0n associated with your ID on slashdot is an incredibly stupid act.
  • screw the internet 2, i want one of the projectors, assuming it really works the way they say it does. that would be a lot more usefull

  • Large companies, who have multiple locations would be the first thing that comes to mind. Especially when people routinely travel around to have meetings.

    Teleconferincing isn't that great -- you can't see anything.

    I have worked in the manufacturing industry where this would be fantastic -- HQ could see all the sides of an object produced in a Far East facility.

    There is a LOT of potential -- even starting at $70,000. (I'm assuming that is for one, and you would need a pair.)
    --
    Charles E. Hill

  • Move? (Score:1)

    by Snafoo ( 38566 )
    So they sell videoconferencing, but had to relocate from the UK to Richardson 'in order to be near other high-tech companies'. Ummmm.... is there a message in there somewhere?
  • Star Trek? I'm pretty sure the poster has his science fiction confused. Star Trek generally uses viewscreens. Star Wars, however, uses 3d holograms. I'm guessing this is what the poster meant.

    -------
    CAIMLAS

  • It depends where you're flying and what airlines are available. When I had to fly from Toronto to Austin on short notice, it was usually less than a $50CDN price difference between coach and first class with Air Canada. Aside from more room in the seat and marginally better food, first class let you use much shorter queues for checking in and getting through US immigration at Pearson International (Toronto has US port of entry offices.)

    Sometimes there just wasn't any choice -- coach gets sold out quicker than first class. Most first class flyers are last-minute purchasers, while coach tends to be full of people who were able to plan ahead.

  • Like you know anything about ninjas. Dont believe the hype.
  • Just being able to see it transmit across the room would be enough, I've got $70k around here somewhere.
  • Also, we can record the personality of the living to bring them back when then die and we can give bodies to AI doctor programs.
  • to be more precise. But it would be better if you had a way to touch stuff, but one thing at a time :)
  • We need holodecks and totally virtual offices.
  • Being able to buy one in a store near me? What's the transmitting end of these things look like?
  • when china takes over the world you're gunna be wishing you'd built yourself a teleportation machine damn it.
  • With a transparent camera in the middle of it? or with some funky lenses behind it to point the thing down at a camera? There are _no_ details, and they want massive amounts of money for it. Can you say "shooting fish".
  • werd up.. now if they had done real actual teleportation then I could see the culture changing effect. How exactly do you have borders between countries (or hell, even between private property) when someone can just teleport in?


  • ...was for educational and research sites only, like the Internet used to be in the good old days.

    A business helping a politician to show off to a bunch of other businesses at a business meeting doesn't sound like research or education. Has Internet II sold out already?

    If in fact this wasn't over Internet II, please correct me (and the /. article).

  • Amiga will be back, dammit, and then you'll all be sorry.....

    And how!
    --------
    Genius dies of the same blow that destroys liberty.

  • It looked pretty good to me. Anyone know the details of how the projection is done?
  • See http://www.phs.uiuc.edu/Projects/Argus for one example (near to my heart). Depending on your definition of 3-d videoconferencing, we probably weren't the first either.

  • Tele-immersion enables users at geographically distributed sites to collaborate in real time in a shared, simulated, hybrid environment as if they were in the same physical room.

    http://www.internet2.edu/html/tele-immersion.html [internet2.edu]

    This is so much better then a 70,000$ remote projector tv.

  • I am somewhat bothered by the fact that university research bandwidth, which is what I2 is supposed to provide, is being used for a commercial endeavor? Is the company paying for the use of this monstrous bandwidth?

    -sirket
  • You know, being the bitter sarcastic unbelieving SOB that I am, I'm gonna say that being that if this actually did happen - it'd be a terrifically historical occasion. That said, I would think there'd be some videtape or some documentation other than a cursory article in a Dallas rag the next day. I refuse to take this at face value. Sounds kinda fishy to me. A Governor appears holographically in front of other people just for a meeting. I mean, obviously being that I2 isn't fully implemented yet, not to mention holographic telephony (if that's even a correct term) and they used it just for a run of the mill meeting. This is the type of thing you'd see featured at Comdex. This is truly groundbreaking, and it was just used for a business meeting in Texas? All apologies if I'm wrong, but I'd like to see more evidence to this fact. If it actually took place, evidence and documentation must surely exist. I simply find it hard to believe that this went through as stated like a 'scene from star wars'. No hiccups or bugs to speak of??? Just some perfect futuristic technology? I mean, I can't even find an audio driver for my friggen sound card under linux and these guys are having holographic meetings with each other. I'll believe it when I see it - sounds like a company pushing vaporware/bugware/promisware/etc..ware to me.
  • I thoguht the goal was to have educational institutions be using this exclusively until it had been finalized. So does this mean Internet2 will be used for business purposes before then or the government gets to use it too?

    And who cares about 3D? It's an extremely poor and useless waste of bandwidth (no matter if it is infinite) for interfaces like this. Why not just make our phones use Dolby Surround Sound?

    *sigh*

  • telepresence, not teleportation (Score:4)

    by LinuxParanoid ( 64467 ) on Saturday April 07, 2001 @04:49PM (#308153) Homepage Journal
    A better term is "telepresence", not "teleportation".

    --LP
  • Moderators - mod this up, this has got to be the funniest thing I've seen in my entire life. Really.
  • Your company deserves to go out of business. They're throwing money away with 1st-class tickets, and that's plain dumb.

    I don't know about Philly to Aus, but here are some comparable prices: (all assuming last-minute business purchases)

    Boston -> London R/T Coach: $2400
    Boston -> London R/T Biz: $6500
    Boston -> London R/T 1st: $11000

    I imagine Philly to Australia is significantly more on all sides. And considering that first-class is not significantly better than business class, your company is lame.

  • They're calling it teleportation. They're linking it to Star Trek. Oh no, not more William Shatner Ads.
  • Damn! just think! Yet another reason to work from home.

  • Re:Teleportec Website (Score:4)

    by gargle ( 97883 ) on Saturday April 07, 2001 @06:06PM (#308158) Homepage
    Their website doesn't say anything about holography or transmitting a "3d image". It sounds like what it does is transmit a lifesized 2d image.
  • Did he have have to bang on an R2D2 unit's head to make this work? Or did R2D2 just give it up without a fight?

    :-)
  • Not only is teleportation a misnomer, but so is the whole Internet 2. A stupid media term that doesn't really apply.

    Its proper name is VBNS. It is more effectively private IP peering among universities than a second "Internet". I wish people could understand that.
  • not if the airline employees are on strike!

    ___________
  • No. Eye-to-eye contact will happen when you're "teleported" into a meeting with one person and that person is teleported into your room. I'll be like the other person is there in front of you, just like in real life. It'll be that way for the person on the other end. At least that's my guess.
  • Unfortunately I tried using this device several months ago. Unbeknownst to me, a fly had entered the "teleportation" device with me. Due to a peculiarity of the focusing lens, all the people on the other end saw was a giant flyhead on top of mine. Fortunately disaster was averted when a CGI Vincent Price entered the frame and rebooted the system.

  • Re:hmm ... (Score:4)

    by Kafka_Canada ( 106443 ) on Saturday April 07, 2001 @04:34PM (#308164)
    It's neat, but at $70,000 a shot, that would pay for an awful lot of plane tickets for the guy to be actually there (as opposed to virtually there).

    missing the point... the idea is that it's better in some circumstances to zoom over at the speed of I2, and get back home as soon as the visit's over. picture going to a friend in australia, then going for a quick visit to your cousins in Greece, then making a five way business call, then checking out some paintings in the Louvre, then taking a shower and having breakfast at your place.
    and of course the $70k pricetag will diminish, as with any new technology, so no need to get upset!

    what you pay for a cable or dsl internet hook-up, would pay for a TON of postage, but there are still reasons for getting a net connection.

  • You are clearly not a ninja. We do teleport all the time, afterall... I agree complete with Mr.Portugese AC, and my language in English. Then again, I speak 32 languages fluently, and maybe those languages rub off on my judgement and interpetation of English, and I may be drugged, so anything I say cannot be trusted.
    I find, as a Ninja, that this holographic "teleportation" would not be very useful. As Ninja, we are in the business of not being seen. I would perhaps invest in such technology if it allowed my image to be transported several thousand miles and then not be seen, but I would not pay more than $20,000 for that level of usefulness.

    This is a moot point, however, because we Ninja have never had problems with transportation. We can climb trees, summon magical dragons, and when all else fails, obtain first-class plane tickets by threatening the counter-girls with our forboding Ninja garb and deadly-keen ninja-to.

    This is not to imply that Ninjas never have a use for real teleportation... I would refer anyone who disputes this to Ninja Gaiden 2, in which I believe the Art of Teleportation is demonstrated quite clearly, along with the Art of Magic Shuriken and the Art of Flaming Balls of Death.

    However, teleportation is an art which Ninja rarely bother with, because of the intense mathematical calulations involved to avoid teleporting into walls, the ground, the moon, or dog feces. (I'll tell you, it sure is embarassing to use your mystical Ninja powers of teleportation, only to discover that you are standing in dog feces! You must return to the dojo in shame, and endure the jibes of your Ninja brethen, which are as sharp as the shuriken! "Hey, brother Ninja! Is it me, or do I smell the odor of dog feces! Oh! It is you, who has stepped in dog feces! Ha! ha!" Oh, it is so frustrating!)

    At this point, you may be wondering what the preferred method of Ninja transportation is. Well, I'll tell you. It is, obviously, the Kawasaki Ninja [kawasaki.com].

    But whatever method of transportations used, a Ninja will not rest until he has completed his mission. The Ninja's mission is simple: to obtain and enjoy as many delicious pancakes as possible. Pancakes covered with syrup and sometimes blueberries are the soul of the Ninja clan and must be obtained and enjoyed at any cost, lest the ancestors set upon us with their firey ancestral wrath. Yes, we shall obtain and enjoy all pancakes that exist, and only then, when all pancakes have been obtained and enjoyed, shall we rest.

    Rest? Did I say rest? I meant commit seppuku.

    Arigatou gozaimasu,
    The_Ninja_Messenger

    --

  • As the previous poster stated:

    the $70k pricetag will diminish, as with any new technology, so no need to get upset!

    As a Texan I think its great that we are using this technology. If no one uses it it's not going to get cheaper!
  • Should I dare mention the pornographic uses of this thing? I mean, people enjoy looking at 2D pictures and go nuts over 2D movies, I can hardly imagine what sort of response a 3D image of a person will recieve.
  • ... It's the diet coke of cool; only one calorie, not quite cool enough ;-)
  • As a few people have said, this has been done before:

    http://slashdot.org/articles/00/10/18/2232258.shtm l [slashdot.org]

    Recently, I attended a programming contest at Penn University and besides walking away with a full copy of Visual Studio 6.0 for my efforts, I got to talk with one of the programmers on the Tele-immersion project (Hi Raj!). Everything about it seemed really cool. Although personally, I think I am going to hold out for a Neural Interface :)

    Penn's Tele-Immersion Page [upenn.edu]
    National Tele-Immersion Initiative [advanced.org]
  • Okay, so picture this in the future. Bill Head-In-A-Jar Gates wants to hold a board meeting at Evil Empires Limited, and everyone who needs to be there has their image sent instead of themselves. Now, two things are unnecissary. 1) The staff to dust the board room because there's no real skin to flake all over it, and 2) the board room, 'cause wouldn't this be done easier and cheaper with VR?
  • Actually, there's a nice piece about tele-immersion and telepresence in this month's Scientific American [sciam.com] written by the "father of Virtual Reality," Jaron Lanier.

    According to the article, this technology's intimate relationship with Internet2 comes mostly from the fact that there were very few applications around which NEEDED Internet2's impressive network stats to actually run. Consequently, the peeps at I2 contacted Jaron to lead up the project. And ... well, you can read about it here [sciam.com].

    Additionally there's some other teleimmersion sites at UNC [unc.edu] and at Jaron's research site [advanced.org].

  • The thing in Texas seems to be a projection TV built into a lectern, with some optics to make it look like a talking head behind a podium. "Teleportation" is a bit much for that.

    Jaron Lanier's thing is something else entirely, a way to capture a 3D scene and send it out for rendering as a stereo image. That's much more elaborate.

    There are three cues you have to get right to produce a convincing depth illusion: depth of focus, relative motion when the viewer's head moves, and binocular stereo. Binocular stereo is in fact the least important of these. And it's really annoying when the cues disagree, which is why looking at stereo images on a monitor using shutter glasses is uncomfortable.

    A display focused at infinity [glassmountain.com] satisfies the depth of focus and relative motion requirement if everything in the field of view is more than a few meters away. Such displays are used in flight simulators. They're simple, but have big glass parts.

    It's also possible to get all three cues almost right for a nearby image of a small object that doesn't present too much range in depth, by using a spherical mirror to project a flat image. Two Sega videodisc games (one called "Hologram Time Traveller", although it does not use a hologram internally) from the late 1980s used such technology.

    The podium thing is probably using some variation on these optical schemes.

    Did anybody notice that it looks a lot like the interocitor from This Island Earth?

  • Teleportation: tele + (trans)portation
    Since the person does not move to another location, this is not the right word.
    Telepresence would seem to be the right word.
  • If someone kills the hologram, will the real person die as well?
  • In Latin, transport comes from trans (across) + porto (I carry) to mean 'I carry across.' Basically, I carry the crap around.
  • Bear in mind that the technology is a one-off cost, while plane tickets are an on-going thing.

    Also, if your average corporate honcho rates at around $50 - $150 / hr cost, then a 12 hour flight is the equivalent of wasting $600 - $1800 per direction, plus ticket costs, accomodation and misc expenses. That's a big pile of cash wasted for what could be a 5-minute meeting.

    Adds up, huh? Whereas $70k and the ability to get to your audience without moving is fantastic!

    --

  • ...is that if an asteroid slams into the bridge of your Star Destroyer during a transmission, you'll lose the connection.
  • Anyone else think this is just to-freeking-cool? I'm getting Asimov flashbacks, I swear. :)
  • it's H320-H323 so probably only a big stereoscopic grabber, it works over ISDN, and basically it's probably grabbing 2 video signals, transmitting it seen like a standard image on the H261 (or 263?) codec, and on the other end it generates something stereo, still if it's H320 compatible, it's not a big deal, limited resolution (so if you have to cramp 2 signal to get stereo, bwah) and so on.. I'd rather like the other pointed out in scientific america with the glasses and big screen.

    And god, do I hate people saying HOLOGRAPHIC when it's AUTOSTEREOSCOPIC.
  • They're just grabbing the name early so they can trademark it and then become the company with "True Teleport[tm] Technology or maybe just sell the trademark to FedEx. Teleport[tm] When it absolutely positively has to be there in 30 minutes or less.
  • This may be expensive as hell, but all it does is proof of concept. Others will follow and when that happens it will become more 'normal' and more readily available to the common man and the common corporation.

    Wonderful start, I wish they would look up the word teleportation, though.

    DanH
    Cav Pilot's Reference Page [cavalrypilot.com]
  • Frankly, this is a bit too much out of the blue until there's a bit of proof to go with it.

    Huh? They did it. What more proof do you need?
    --
  • heh, great, just what I do _NOT_ need, another disruptive piece of technology. Shit, folks, already, give it up, the internet helps with staying faceless, and I happen to like it that way. If I wanted somebody to know who I was, I sure as hell wouldn't be using an alias.

    Face to face contact? Err, excuse me, but isn't one of the perks of being a business man/woman being able to travel around the world at your companies expense? Sure, it can be a hassle, but with this new device you get all the work load, but none of the exquiset food! Hehe, just great, one more excuse to stay locked up in the office all your life, grrr.

  • They mention Salford Uni uses their stuff... I've a friend there, I'll see what I can find out.

    #include <stddiscl.h>

  • I've read the whole thing and i still can't figure out if this actually records 3d images, and if so, how does it do it?

    When it says you can have eye contact, does it mean that the person being "teleported" (at least you know they have a marketing department) will also receive an image of the room he's being teleported to? if not, this isn't eye contact any more than staring at a monalisa painting is...

    So, if this is what it sounds like, and what they have is a 3d recorder and a 3d proyector (they claim 40" by 30") on each end, then a $70,000.00 price tag is a bargain I think. I can even see how it could pay for itself at that price. Just imagine how much it costs a company to have bi-monthly meetings with executives, say, from their Japan branch. Not just the plane ticket, but hotel costs, the 3 wasted days traveling, etc. Most likely they just wouldn't have those meetings, so this product opens up new possibilities...

    Now if you ask me how I would have done it, well, I'd stick with glasses that project images into your eyes. You can record the whole scene with several traditional cameras on both ends, have the computer generate a 3d model of both places (this can be done pretty easily already) and have them transmitted to their destination, where people are wearing glasses that project the "teleported" person in a fixed area somewhere in front of you, and have the image stay there even if you move your head. All of this has been done already but not with this application
  • Not to mention the chief surgeon saying 'dammit Jim I'm a doctor. not a wooly-bearded Unix guru'.
  • There's also whole Tele-Immersion Initiative [advanced.org], as well as smaller things like audio teleportation [internet2.edu] and Virtual Halloween [internet2.edu].
  • "Help me, Ann Richards, you're my only hope."

    Later,

  • All this does is project the image of someons upper body to a 40" by 30" flat clear screen. Just a tinsey tiny step above webcams if you ask me.
  • Looks to me like these 'units' use an angled glass plate as a semi transparent mirror to both project the image of the virtual person, and capture the image of the real person. This makes it possible to look directly at the image AND into the camera, whcih is the gimmick. NO holography or 3D.
  • don't get me wrong

    but think about the p0rn!!

    SCORE!!

  • Check this month's Scientific American for more information on the technology involved, or read here [sciam.com]. There's also some links from the article to various sites relating to telepresence. Enjoy!
    ---
    www.stallman.org is running Apache/1.3.6 (Unix) on FreeBSD
  • Acquire and apply some humility.

    No kidding. If he could beam me a freaking taco, I'd be impressed.

  • Link to more information (Score:4)

    by quokka70 ( 175988 ) on Saturday April 07, 2001 @03:55PM (#308200)
    For something similar sounding (but apparently different), check out this article [sciam.com] in the April Scientific American.

    Cheers, quokka

  • I hate to be a wet blanket, but hasn't anyone noticed that we don't even have 2D video phones in any kind of penetration? Sure, they exist, but they are hardly ubiquitous even in business situations.

    Given that 2D has pretty much failed for a variety of reasons, what makes anyone think that 3D is going to suddenly become a "must have" item that will drive down the cost?

    In short, all the same claims have been made for video phones for 30 years (2001: A Space Odyssey, anyone?). None of them have come true. I think there are two primary reasons: 1) the advantages of seeing the person are not all that much compared to the added bandwidth cost (at least 100-1000 times voice bandwidth), and 2) I think most people don't *want* to be seen over the phone. Think about how much more trouble you have to take in your appearance when you go to a customer's site versus just going into the office (well, maybe not you, Mr. Geek, but think about the rest of the world). It's a lot more effort to have to dress up all the time for phone meetings with clients.

    I predict this is one of those cases where it's "the technology of the future, and always will be".


    --

  • I guess it's kinda cool...but not THAT cool. It is the margarine of cool.

  • Good lord, all sorts of off-topic questions come to mind...

    What happens if this guy broadcast the image all over the place? What happened if they substituted a dramatic presentation for a speech? Could you get the Battle for Naboo in your living room?

    This is weird. One of the things George Clooney said as an actor made the big difference between film acting and tv acting was that on tv, the audience feels bigger than the people they're watching. What would happen if it suddenly got put into 3d and you've got two-foot tall Hollywood stars running around? Will this be the end of flat-screen presentations period?

    Will this sort of thing eventually replace computer monitors for things like games? It sure would make the 3D a lot more realistic looking, although maybe only in closed-boundary areas...

  • Ugh. This is going to take those annoying goatse.cx posts to a whole new level . . .
  • What advantage is there to using videoconfrancing, as opposed to a telephone and a desktop sharing system of some kind? I mean, hell, email some PowerPoint slides if you want to, then call somebody on a phone. What's the point to videoconferencing, anyway? Seriously. Is there something I'm missing?

  • This short story I read.

    The basic gist of it was that the President of the United States beamed himself holographically to the houses of all Americans to eat dinner with all the families. It also involved some AI that was a clone of the President's personality so each family could interact with him differently. And then their conversations were later data-mined to try and get an accurate view of how the people felt about the direction the country was moving in.

    Unfortunately, I can't remember the name of the story or the author :( Anyone? Anyone?

  • The science of teleportation (Score:3)

    by screwballicus ( 313964 ) on Saturday April 07, 2001 @05:00PM (#308225)
    According to noted physicists who have dealt with this topic in a number of academic sources, a process isn't technically deemed to be teleportation, in the sense which Science Fiction would have us appreciate it, unless

    1) swirly sparkly doo-dads flash around the area where the subject is standing

    and

    2) a low-pitched fluctuating tone sounds from a the lights above and beneath them.

    * A fat Scotsman is also key to the process, for one reason or another.

  • Internet1 could do this too--if we only had 3 sites connected, like Internet2 does. Quit telling me how great it is and let me on.
    --

  • Ah, yes, a world of uses... (Score:3)

    by increduloidx ( 409461 ) on Saturday April 07, 2001 @03:47PM (#308235) Homepage
    If you think PHONE sex was popular...


    The One,
    The Only,
    --The Kid

  • It's neat, but at $70,000 a shot, that would pay for an awful lot of plane tickets for the guy to be actually there (as opposed to virtually there).

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