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I'm pretty optimistic about Magic Leap, and lightfield technology in general. Where I see it really shining is as a successor to staged plays, and cinema. The
by buro9 9y ago
I'm pretty optimistic about Magic Leap, and lightfield technology in general.
Where I see it really shining is as a successor to staged plays, and cinema.
The thought of allowing viewers to really deeply immerse, comfortably for long periods of time, to control the point of focus, to move around.
Kurosawa would shoot movies by building whole sets with all walls intact that worked from every angle, and having the actors perform the scene over and over like a contiguous play, and then this would eventually be shot from 3 fixed points in a single take, offering a consistent and seamless edited final version with perfect continuity... imagine this with an array of lightfield cameras capturing the set and actors, and using CGI to gap fill angles where necessary... and then allowing people to experience cinema from within the set.
Or, imagine animated cinema where the animations are real-time inserted into a set that you move around and interact with. The magical real being tangibly real.
Beyond games, beyond the AR/VR as we've experienced, I think that there's a really rich content vein that could be tapped within pure entertainment consumption, and that of the technologies lightfield tech may give the best control and experience to consumers.
- deckar01 9y agoEver since Lytro made a light field camera I have been waiting for a light field display. It seems odd that it is being developed commercially in a compact AR device rather than a TV sized display.
- harpastum 9y agoThe current generation of VR headsets serve as pretty solid light field displays. Current VR can’t show differences in focus yet, but having a large field of view and vivid colors makes for a pretty awesome experience.
- ctdonath 9y agoThey're not light field displays. Current VR is fixed 2D monitors with focal-length adjusters (so a 5cm display 3cm from your eye looks like it's a 5m display 3m away). Light field presents photons in a way your eye can dynamically adjust focus & position within.
- azurelogic 9y agoI don't know enough about the physics, but it could be similar to the difficulty in making glasses-free 3D TVs. Things like the Nintendo 3DS only succeeded because they naturally dictate the viewer's position. I imagine that this kind of thing would be easier to develop if you could control the focal point (i.e.: strapping someone's eyeballs into place).
- nradov 9y agoThat would require an order of magnitude more money and effort for movie production. For example, sets would have to look real from multiple angles instead of being just slapped together to work for a single shot. And there's no evidence that audiences actually want this level of interactivity in their "lean back" entertainment.
- 659087 9y agoAfter going out to see a movie for the first time in a few years this past weekend, I can't really picture many of the overweight families I saw fully reclined shoveling hamburgers into their faces wanting to get up and "interact" with a movie.
- buro9 9y agoBut could you picture a set in the round with all of the audience sitting in a circle in a tiered auditorium, and a set being rendered over the audience and actors performing in the middle? Shakespeare in the round would be given a fully immersive experience, and it didn't require any person to move at all... it simply means that from the perspective of each individual the set is fully complete and hides the audience as much as possible and gives each observer a unique angle, focus point. That an actor could interact with a modern object (foam stick) that is rendered as an epoch suitable object (a longsword) would be possible. The possibilities are really quite something, for the scenario of "each viewer has a lightfield viewer and the scene, set and objects can be rendered in real-time for them".
- haZard_OS 9y agoImagine Alzheimer's sufferers being able to touch an object and ask what it is - then receiving an immediate answer. Imagine a similar scenario for foreign language learners.
- archagon 9y agoThat would be amazing. I once attended a real-life version of this called "Sleep No More"[1] — a looping, living play taking place in a darkened warehouse where you could freely move around, examine every room (down to the drawer), and even interact with the actors to a limited degree. The audience was made to wear masks, and the physicality combined with the anonymity and general darkness gave you the ghostly sense of losing yourself. It was a sublime and markedly different experience from any other medium I'd ever encountered. (I wouldn't go again because the eroticism and occult themes make me quite uncomfortable, but the idea and execution were incredible from an artistic point of view.) In a few decades, this could literally be the next "movies". [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_No_More_(2011_play) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_No_More_(2011_play)
- l33tbro 9y agoI think you're correct about stage, but great cinema to me relies on a director's unique point of view. The meaning derived from cinematic storytelling lies entirely in where the camera is placed at that specific moment of the narrative playing out. Perhaps I'm too narrow-minded, but I fail to see how this tech would create a compelling cinematic experience. Stage, on the other hand, makes complete sense.