
Bent horizon photos - jamesbowman
http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/aydin-buyuktas-photos-flatland
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Aardappel
I've always thought racing games should take this perspective, which would fix
the problem that (in first person view) your most important information (how
does the road ahead curve?) is concentrated in a small part of your screen and
hard to see. This would combine the utility of a minimap of the road ahead and
the nice overview you get going downhill in a single view.

I've already made 2 prototypes of it (a race-track on the inside of a sphere),
but as always, didn't get very far. There's probably a more optimal projection
to be found than a sphere, but it's an easy start.

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superJoy
Clever idea, would probably work well for an arcade style game if you're set
on a first person view. For a "driving simulator" type (Forza, for example)
game, first person is used for a more authentic experience, in which case, you
may as well turn the minimap off anyway and learn the course the way you would
in real life.

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panic
"Here & There" is a street map taking a similar approach:
[http://berglondon.com/products/hat/](http://berglondon.com/products/hat/)

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lsh
[http://www.aydinbuyuktas.com/](http://www.aydinbuyuktas.com/)

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
The Parallel Universe II images under the Portfolio menu make me feel
nauseous.

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lanewinfield
I saw these the other day and wondered—could you make these programmatically
with a drone? Have it lift off, tilt downwards, and stitch them together...

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terminado
I get the sense that that's exactly how these were created. The transition
from ground view to aerial view gives no hint of a full-sized aircraft's ideal
lift-off point.

These are probably all hand-stitched though, with photo manipulation tools,
and not programmatically generated, since it seems to be a one-off project
inspired by the surrounding environment and terrain. It's likely possible to
program a utility that creates these, as a follow-up phase to the general
concept.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
From the article: _Using his skills in 3-D animation and visual effects to
assemble multiple overhead shots into seamless photographs_

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mannykannot
The foreground shots are not overhead shots, which is why a drone seems the
most (if not only) plausible source for the raw images.

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omegant
I had some tears ago the idea of using this proyection for navigation maps in
cars. This was when inception came out of course. The idea was adding a new
kind of display for your TomTom in your car windshield. Obviously you need a
very powerful hud-augmented reality generator to display a map like this in
your windshield and don't have the image block your actual road view. Way too
out of current technology and my capabilities. We'll have to wait some more
years for something like this.

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kbouck
Reminds me of that city-bending scene from Inception

[https://youtu.be/dG22TcpjRnY](https://youtu.be/dG22TcpjRnY)

~~~
Sandman
To me it looks like what a person living inside a Standford Torus would see:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_torus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_torus)

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arthurfm
There was a really cool Standford Torus in Elysium.

[http://i.imgur.com/YbPQn56.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/YbPQn56.jpg)

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mettamage
Could creating automated software for this be a potential computer science
master thesis? I know this would be alright for a bachelor and probably not
substantial enough for a PhD thesis. But I'm wondering if it is academic
enough for a master thesis.

I might consider to switch, since what I'm doing now is not a project I
believe in and I'm only doing it to get the paper.

~~~
darkmighty
As a student, I would find that an interesting thesis. As your advisor I
guess.

I'm working on a generalization of this concept to rendering, but I'm not sure
I would publish the results or just write informally about it. The idea is to
generalize light rays to depend on the geometry of the scene, allowing them to
bend to reach more interesting parts (behind objects or the horizon) as a
global function of the scene configuration.

~~~
lebek
Sounds really interesting - post it on HN whenever you publish?

I like the idea of VR/AR user interfaces where light rays bend interactively
according to controller/gaze position. So for example by looking at the edge
of an object the light rays bend so you see behind it. Or by looking off into
the horizon the entire landscape folds over like in these photos. Possibly
vomit-inducing and useless, but I still want to try it.

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mikeash
I don't understand why, but these pictures make me uncomfortable.

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dyukqu
Because of our brains' instinctive perception of _the trap_ , maybe.

We automaticly find ourselves wandering around the surroundings pictured in
these works, but we can't really _wander_ , because it's like a hamster wheel
(or let it be a hamster _cylinder_ ) - there is no _horizon_ , so it restricts
our ability to dream about & expand the fantasy world. No freedom for our
imaginations there.

Thus, it's actually a good thing to feel uncomfortable. It tells about our
_eagerness_ for both physical & imaginative _freedom_ , IMHO.

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DonHopkins
This would be great for a live map view of a GPS navigation device.

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FunnyLookinHat
I would totally buy a 40x15 print of these to hang in my house.

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nickpeterson
What if you bend them the other way? Oh, nm.

