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Yes, they have these in the real world, but what happens when they are cheap enough so anyone can play with them? Computers once cost millions of dollars each, but when they were cheap enough to put one on your desk at home, many other uses surfaced.
Most of us collect something about ourselves, whether it is pictures of our families, bronzed baby shoes, or other objects. But collecting data about how your body moves in space - that's different. "Motion capture" is defined as the recording of body movement for later analysis. The information gathered can be as simple as a small set at points in space representing wrist, elbow, shoulder points, etc. Or, very complex structures like the changing expressions on a person's face, requiring hundreds of datapoints for a very small area, can be captured.
The earliest technology for this purpose, rotoscoping, was used to make Snow White, the Disney animated feature, more compelling. This technique utilized frame-by-frame film of live actors; animators then traced over the frames.
The first motion capture "suits" were electromechanical telefactoring devices; they lead to real-time control of puppets or allowed actors to script movements of computer graphics characters in the 1980's.
Optical tracking of the human body, using small markers at various points on the body, was also used at this time. The person was then filmed, and then the datapoints gathered from the film.
Take a look at a brief motion capture suit video to get a good look at how the motion of the suit translates into data usable in real time by a computer graphics program.
Don't miss this fascinating Flash application made from motion capture suit data. For more detailed information about the history of motion capture suits, be sure to see this very nice article A Brief History of Motion Capture for Computer Character Animation.
For a look at the first telefactoring device, see Waldo, from the Robert Heinlein story of the same name. Heinlein invented the term as well as the concept of telefactoring. Comment/Join this discussion ( 1 ) | RSS/XML | Blog This | Additional
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Science Fiction
Timeline
Brin's 1990 Novel Earth Still Full Of Predictions
'... making the point that their likenesses, every move they made, were being transmitted.'
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.'
Splendid View Of Eclipse From Orbit Visualized And Repurposed By Arthur C. Clarke
'The area affected was five hundred kilometres across, and perfectly circular.'
Goldene - A Two-Dimensional Sheet Of Gold One Atom Thick
'Hasan always pitched a Gauzy - a one-molecule-layer tent, opaque, feather-light, and very tough.'
SpaceX Wants A Moonbase Alpha
'And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia's most trusted post, the Moonbase.'
Vast Apartment Living Will Get Even More Vast
'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'
NASA Wants Self-Driving Or Remote-Controlled Vehicles For Lunar Astronauts
'THE autobus turned silently down the wide street of Hydropole. Robot-guided, insulated from noise and cold...'
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