If we can only see tomorrow ...

If we can only see tomorrow ... what fascinating changes might we behold? Portals is a blog about what may be, based on things we see and hear today, perhaps images and knowledge of past events, something covered in dust long forgotten, or may be the dreams of what may be! Did we ever give some thought about past dreams? Is it possible to see the potential of things to come by looking at the past. Perhaps hindsight is always better the foresight? Sometime the creative minds of the past just needed the right technology and the right forces at work to make possibilities of past dreams! A brief look at how someone's creative mind thought a moon shot (Silent Film "Trip to the Moon") could happen ...



Compare to an actual trip to the moon (Launch of First Apollo Moon Landing) on July 16, 1969 ...




Still 'Shot' into the air! Yet, the moon looks a little different ... for real!

Virtual environments (VE) provide new possibilities to the future.  VE offer the creative mind a chance to design and build new and old ideas without risk. One area with great potential is organizational conferences. Today, each attendee is represented by an avatar. One day, each avatar in the conference may have a real time animation of their facial and body motions in place of specified actions pre-stored in the avatar. There are some real-time animations with elaborate equipment not readily available. This systems base on a base human head then mapping onto the base the face. The facial expression are based on a code book of possible expressions.

The technological force is a major factor. Bandwidth is limiting for the stream of data, and multi-player interaction. Perhaps, social, some people like their anonymity, some interact better without their real face showing! Yet, take a look at some of graphics of today's online games. Some of the avatars look very life-like!

Take a look at some of the work in CG technology from "20100701 Photorealistic Facial Animation", University of Southern California, Institute for Creative Technologies (http://ict.usc.edu/) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z72U7Z75ww



Can we see real time animation in the future?

Technology continues to evolve. Algorithmic and compression routines along with multiprocessing technology add to the real-time virtual animation of human faces. The bandwidth is still a limiting factor with massively multiplayer online systems. The information era continues to grow in numbers of individual and corporate use of online interfaces. While the cultural aspect of increase use of the Internet shoes changes in the way people do business, there still remains the positive nature of existing virtual world technology anonymity offered to individuals that is removed by real-time facial rendering. Perhaps, time is the changer of acceptance of seeing oneself online? After all, preschoolers are already becoming literate with computers and the Internet!