[From iSmashPhone] They Work For Scale: Old-School Optical Illusion Propels Animated Fish Pond It’s interesting that the current 3D/CGI boom is not only pushing technological advances in the screening room AND the living room — it’s also resurrecting a scad of old-fashioned, low-tech tricks.  If your last name isn’t Cameron, you probably can’t afford to design your own stereoscopic HD videocamera rig and shoot a gazillion-dollar sci-fi blockbuster.  However, as we’ve seen on this very blogeroo, you can get “3D” on your iPhone with a brace of mirrors, or make ghostly text float in mid-air with your iPad. Now say…

[From Military & Aerospace Electronics; also see an article in Flying magazine in which a pilot describes his experience using Honeywell’s Smartview system] Designs for avionics and synthetic vision rely heavily on human factors research Jan 4, 2011 By John McHale People interact with machines in different ways — with their eyes, touch, voices, and even their brain waves. These human factors are important when designing cars, home theaters, and especially commercial and military aircraft cockpits. Telepathic flight control still resides in fictional realms such as the 1982 Clint Eastwood movie FireFox — in which a pilot stole a Soviet jet…

[From The Guardian] The Mind’s Eye by Oliver Sacks – review Oliver Sacks’s study of optical dysfunction is a real eye-opener, says Tim Radford Tim Radford The Guardian, Saturday 1 January 2011 All reality is virtual: we reconstruct the outside world with a virtual reality headset pre-installed at birth and tuned by experience so perfectly that most of the time we are barely conscious of it. The optic nerve delivers data from a blitz of electromagnetic wavelengths: the brain filters the information, selects the focus, interprets the imagery and projects it on to an interior screen. This unthinking process is…

[From The University of Derby Connected Online] [Image: A 3D image produced by the VisiDeck system] Games Technology ‘Virtually’ Advances Architecture 7 December 2010  Architects’ two-dimensional plans are set to be turned into highly realistic three dimensional (3D) virtual worlds you can walk through and interact with, thanks to a joint hi-tech project between the University of Derby and one of its graduates. Tony Coates, a student on the University’s BSc (Hons) Architectural Technology and Practice degree course, and software consultant Andy Yelland, who worked on the popular computer game Spiderman 2 among others, established company VisiDeck Ltd. The company…

[From Singularity Hub] [Image: Ah, the holidays…when good people all over the world log on to Skype and share a virtual meal in Amsterdam.] Celebrate Together When You’re Worlds Apart: Virtual Holiday Dinner December 30th, 2010 by Aaron Saenz This holiday season 156 people living on six different continents got to eat dinner with their closest friends and loved ones even though they were thousands of miles apart. Was it Christmas magic, a Hanukkah miracle, or a Kwanza surprise? Nope, just another example of modern technology. Using five robotic telepresence ‘dolls’, Skype, and one oversized table, Dutch advertising firm Wieden+Kennedy…

[From The Los Angeles Times] [Image: An SPFXMasks employee, left, sprays a layer of paint on a mask called “The Player.” That model was used by a white man, right, in a string of robberies in Ohio. An innocent black man was held until the culprit was turned in. (Bob Chamberlin / Los Angeles Times; Gary Landers / Associated Press)] Masks so realistic they’re arresting the wrong guy A white man who robbed Ohio banks looked so convincing in a black-male disguise that an innocent man was held. That’s not exactly how SPFXMasks of Van Nuys had intended its masks…