Microsoft R&D Burns $65 Million In Three Months On Something Unknown

[daroamer]

theprof00 said:

daroamer said:

theprof00 said:

ssj12 said:

Its probably Microsoft LightSpace

http://research.microsoft.com/apps/video/default.aspx?id=139046

that was the dumbest thing ive ever seen.

"you pull out your hand and it shows you directions, or an arrow appears on the floor"

"I can pass the video to him, in his hand, and he can drop it on the paper and play around with it"

What a useless technology.

How was that useless?  These are tech demos, you can think of all kinds of cool applications for this.

A good example is in the movie Avatar when they first put Jake in the avatar link pod and the doctor is looking at the scan of his brain on a big monitor, then with just the swipe of his hand he transfers that to a tablet like device so he can walk with it.

Think of if you're reading the daily paper on your computer and you have to go to the bathroom and you'd like to finish reading, you pick up your future iPad and just swipe from your monitor to the iPad and boom, there it is instantly.

no, this uses a projector to do the tech. You would need a projector in every room at every angle to even start producing the kinds of effects you're talking about. It's just not feasible.

You're really confusing what is happening in that demo for what you wish it did. It's not putting the file onto something else, it's projecting it onto something else. Did you see that projector they were using? That's a really really expensive set up. That's like, comemrcially priced equipment. You're talking tens of thousands, just for that one room, for SOME angles.

However, what you're talking about is easily done with different methods. In Japan, cell phones transfer files and information using IR or bluetooth or some such technology. All you have to do is equip an iPad with that and similarly with the monitor. Boom, instant file transmission. No need to even swipe your hand.

As far as the newspaper idea. There are already several foldable screen techs in the works. Pocket sized pads that fold out to standard paper size.

It's a silly tech, at best, at worst, it's an already outdated piece of technology. Outdated in the sense that there are already cheap alternatives to doing the same thing, or capable of doing similar things.

The tech wasn't about the projectors, it was about using the depth cameras to create natural human user interfaces.

The way the information was displayed within the room isn't what's relevant.  That table he was using to move the pictures around could just as easily been a regular monitor, the point was you didn't need the monitor to be touch sensitive, ala Microsoft Surface, because the interaction was being controlled by the depth cameras.  The point is ANY surface can become a touch user interface of sorts.

Similarly when he swipes the video onto his hand it can swiped onto anything he is holding like a phone....what is generating the ball of light on his hand is IRRELEVANT.  It's the motions being interpretted by the depth cameras that cause the data to move from surface to surface (table, body, screen) that is really the important thing here.

Go watch the video again.