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"People ask me how I do research for my science fiction. The answer is, I never do any research. I just enjoy reading the stuff, and some of it sticks in my mind and fits into the stories."
- Frederik Pohl
 |
| Feeler-Planes | ||
| Special sensors that make extremely detailed three-dimensional models. |
Prior to his stay on Iszm, traveler Aile Farr was forced to sit still for an exquisitely accurate biometric identification method.
| "On the gray disk, Farr Sainh - palms forward, eyes wide."
He stood rigid as feeler-planes brushed down his body. In a glass dome a three-dimensional simulacrum of himself six inches high took form. Farr inspected it sourly. |
| Technovelgy from The Houses of Iszm,
by Jack Vance. Published by Better Publications in 1954 Additional resources -
|
The feeler-planes were able provide remarkable details about a surface - including finger-prints - in a completed tri-type record.
The problem of 3D model acquisition (the digitization of a real, three-dimensional object) is more difficult than you might think.
(Acquisition with light source, camera, calibration target, test object)
It is particularly difficult to obtain digital models that correctly capture fine texture details:
Several views of each object are captured with different camera and light source positions. For each view, we acquire a series of photographs of the object lit by the point light source, with varying exposure time from which a high dynamic range image [2] is calculated. After calibrating with the known brightness of the lamp, each pixel of the high dynamic range images contains full range, floating point radiance samples. Furthermore, we take two images to recover the light source position relative to the camera and one image of the object's silhouette to register the 3D geometry model with the images [8]. In a production environment, the 3D scanner, camera, light source, and the test object could be combined into single, calibrated gantry to speed up the acquisition process and to render the registration unnecessary.Read more at Digital Collection of Real World Objects.
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More Ideas
and Technology from The Houses of Iszm
More Ideas
and Technology by Jack Vance
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Tech news articles related to works by Jack Vance
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- Mini Statues Of You From 3D Images
- MIT 3D Scanner - 1000x Improvement?
- Scanify 3D Scanner For You!
| Can 'Tactical Umbrellas' Shield One From Drones |
| Chinese Aircar Light And Airy, Not For Blade Runners |
| The Morphing Wheel And The Smartwheel |
| Transporting Antimatter |
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'Then she looked up with a smile and moved closer to the camera.'
'... folios and tapes and playable discs of platinum alloy.'
'... another corner of his mind began to think about the shields.'
'Michel Ardan, as a Frenchman, was declared chief cook, an important function, which raised no rival.'
'Sapiro’s computer just kept dialing at random, hanging up on humans, until it got a fellow computer of the same type as itself.'
'I request that you feed the correlation between those dots and the levers of the panel into my memory banks.'
