Tired of looking at your regular old face when video conferencing? OMOTE, a Japanese artist's collective, can work miracles in real time video.
(OMOTE Real Time Face Projection)
So how does it work? To oversimplify it: an array of cameras tracks the dots on their faces, akin to the way Hollywood motion capture systems work. They then take some truly amazing texture/animation work and digitally morph it around a model of each guy’s face — essentially making a mask of light — and project it onto their skin in real time.
Bruce Sterling's video-manicuring program from his 1985 novel Schismatrix should come to mind for science fiction fans:
Lindsay had a brief glimpse of the man's true appearance - white hair in spiky disarray, red-rimmed eyes - before a video-manicuring program came on line. The program raced up the screen one scan line at a time, subtly smoothing, deleting and coloring.
(Read more about Sterling's video-manicuring program)
Zoom Education Idea Is 100 Years Old
'... the frosted glass squares began, one by one, to show the faces and shoulders of a peculiar type of young men.' - Harry Stephen Keeler, 1915.
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Gaia - Why Stop With Just The Earth?
'But the stars are only atoms in larger space, and in that larger space the star-atoms could combine to form living matter, thinking matter, couldn't they?'
Microsoft VASA-1 Creates Personal Video From A Photo
'...to build up a video picture would require, say, ten million decisions every second. Mike, you're so fast I can't even think about it. But you aren't that fast.'