
Futuristic Interfaces on Display at SIGGRAPH - jp_sc
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/23940/
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ljlolel
Holy crap. If they did not have videos of all these technologies, I would not
believe them. These prototypes work. They just work. It's only a matter of
scaling up the detail and packaging it right for consumers. The future is
here.

~~~
knome
> The future is here.

The future is here. It's just not evenly distributed yet. \-- William Gibson

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nazgulnarsil
...tactile holograms?

GIVE ME MY HOLODECK. Please, please be in my lifetime.

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utku_karatas2
I wouldn't hold my breath. Touch screens were invented in, what, 70s? And it
took somewhat 30+ years for it to be widely used by the average person.

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nazgulnarsil
assuming that we'll see change at the previous growth rate is silly if we get
molecular engineering.

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snprbob86
I really like the scratchable input idea, but their gestures seem overly
complex for realistic use. I think that double tapping on my desk to answer or
hangup on a speaker phone call would be a nice touch to any smart phone. You
could probably implement it with the microphones already existing on most
handsets.

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liuliu
Many two or three microphones can do better? Distinguishing position or
something. That can be very useful.

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snprbob86
If you knew the position of the sensors, you could probably calculate a
position from audio/vibration delays. You could make a kit for converting a
normal whiteboard into a recording surface.

Simply place sensors on the board corners and tell the software about their
placement and the dimensions of your board. You need three sensors to do a
proper triangulation, but you only need two if you know the sensors are in
corners. With only two _corner_ sensors, one of the two possible locations
would be off the board, so you could throw that point out. If you can reliably
sense whiteboard marker and eraser sounds, you could reliably "save" the
whiteboard state.

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nvoorhies
Wouldn't the delay between 2 sensors only give 1 delay, and thus one
dimension? I don't follow how placing them on the corners makes this work.

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snprbob86
D'oh! Sorry, you are correct. I was thinking you'd get two distances to point
of contact, but you actually get relative distance of the point of contact
with respect to the sensors. You are correct, you would need three sensors.

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10ren
I was thinking you could use volume, which would work with 2 sensors as you
describe, but I like the idea of delay as it's probably more accurate.

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alex_c
This... is magic. Plain and simple.

Desktop fabricators, now "touchable" holograms.

What a great time to be alive :)

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sp332
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. :)

\--Gehm's Corollary to Clarke's Third Law (smiley added)

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tocomment
Any idea how hard the ultrasound radiation pressure (used in the tactile
holograms) would be to make?

I guess you just need transducers, and some software to time them correctly?
That's unbelievable to me.

They say they can't get very powerful though or stray sound would damage your
hearing. I wonder if there's any way around that? i.e., different frequencies?

