Intel Releases Open-Source Stereoscopic Software 129
Eslyjah writes "Intel has released a software library that allows computers to "see" in 3D. The library is available for Windows and Linux, under a BSDish license. Possible early applications include lipreading input. Check out the CNN Story, Intel Press Release, and project home page."
ANother feeble attempt.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Nobody needs it. Nobody. Those who do - will write their own stuff..
Re:Usefulness? (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure, it might sound a bit far fetched.
But.. a computer being able to actually construct something in 3 dimensions instead of simply a colorfield has *huge* implications with regards to image recognition.. it really does.
Take a single image of, say, a user's hands, for gesture recognition. How do you recognize the hands from the background? Color.... heuristics.. and what not.
But now.. it's simple. It's the stuff that's close to you! It's a completely different way to look at things.
Re:Usefulness? (Score:2, Interesting)
Mapping, and lots of different kinds of aerial/satellite photo analysis. You don't have to be looking directly at something to see a 3D view of it--you can look at stereo images--and so could a computer. Examples at Lunar and Planetary Institute: 3D Mars images [usra.edu].
Eventually, autopilots for cars.
Application Idea (Score:3, Interesting)
What's the use? Well, besides the obvious uses in architecture, etc., how about being able to play (insert favorite 1st person shooter game here) in your house?
Geeze, now that I think about it, maybe this isn't such a good idea [slashdot.org]. What would JonKatz [slashdot.org] think?
Here's some cool uses for 3D computer vision (Score:4, Interesting)
How about a way to have a PC recognize the position of your fingers and hands. You could use this to manipulate shapes in 3D in a 3D rendering and animation program WITHOUT SPECIAL GLOVES. You'd simply gesture into something like 3DStudioMax, Lightwave, or Caligari TrueSpace and create shapes by molding them with your fingers.
Or wouldn't it be cool to develop a "hand gesture API" which you could use to say play a karate game??? Think about a 3D Bruce Lee in front of you kicking, and you moving your OWN hands in front of the monitor to block it (and if you wear those cool 3D shutter glasses now common on graphics cards you will essentially have a low-budget VR system).
Or how about a driving game where you use no driving wheel but rather simply move your hands IN THE AIR. The game could be smart enough to recognize when you shift your hands away from an invissible steering wheel to grab an invissible gear stick on your side.
Or how about a tool to allow people like Stephen Hawkins gesture expressions and small movements in the air and have the computer react to these actions (like moving a wheelchair around, turning lights on and off, calling on the phone, changing TV channels, etc).
Think about the possibilities!!!
Re:Usefulness? (Score:4, Interesting)
One word: mensuration.
Read that again. It's not a typo. Mensuration (which generally means the act or process of measuring) specifically means figuring out how tall buildings or features are from satellite photographs. Traditionally it involves calculating heights trigonometrically based on the time of day, latitude, and angle of lens inclination from which the photograph was taken, using shadows as points of reference.
This is not a research project. It's a very practical process, with tons of applications in the commercial world.
My point is that there are a lot of image analysis techniques that you've probably never heard of before. Don't mistake a lack of experience on your part for a lack of usefulness on theirs.
Re:Here's some cool uses for 3D computer vision (Score:3, Interesting)
What about mouse clicks???
Tap of the finger?
Hmm, interesting concept anyway.
I'd like to use this to analyze pictures taken from a model airplane to create 3d plots of the ground contour!
Re:Not 3D Rendering, 3D Viewing (Score:1, Interesting)
What I've been wanting forever (Score:2, Interesting)
Its not that complicated, kids. (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's how you do make stereoscopic images with a digital camera:
Take a picture like you normally would, but be mindful of the position and angle of your camera.
2) Snap a picture.
3) If the subject you're photographing is close to you, take a small step to the right. If the subject is far away, take a large step to the right.
4) Aim your camera at the subject and photograph it again.
5) Pull up both images in the photo editor of your choice.
6) Arrange the photos side by side. The first image you took should be on the left, the second image you took should be on the right.
7) Sit directly infront of your monitor, and blur your eyes. If you cant blur them, try crossing them slightly. Try to focus on "the picture in the middle". If you still cant do it, hold up a pencil (eraser-side up) exactly halfway between your eyeball and the screen. Focus on the eraser. The image on the screen should pop out at you in stereoscopic 3D.
For some good examples of a stereoscopic images I took, go here. [ibiblio.org] Try the picture of the steering wheel first...Its really easy. You'll also see a number of stereo photos of Tumacoccori, an 18th century Spanish mission that got the shit beat out of it by native americans. You'll also find another picture thats rather interesting---It's a downward view of a deactivated nuclear missile still in the silo at the Titan Missile Museum outside of Tucson. The view extends about 20 floors below ground. If I were to have taken this photo in 1981 versus 2001, I would have been shot on sight.
Cheers,
Re:ANother feeble attempt.. (Score:2, Interesting)
I've been using this library the last couple years, and it reduces CPU demand. I was doing pupil tracking using it only for image capture, and I needed two PIII-860Mhz with 400Mhz RAMBUS memory. Using it for some of the basic image processing reduced demand so it almost ran on a single Athelon, I think the memory was too slow on those boxen, but I left the project at that point. Fast enough was 30 fps, and it was difficult even with the library. (We needed the 3D position of the eyes reliably at video rates for a stereo display and didn't want the user to have to wear anything.)
They have pretty decent MMX algorithms which work out of the box. I'd have to say those that do write in C unless they absolutely can't avoid it. I was happy to squeeze an extra two cycles out of the inner loop of my MMX code, but I'd really rather have Intel do it since it's not the core of my work.
Computers are slow and always will be, I'm a graphics person so 6 hours to render a frame is really slow, to real vision people processing an image for depth overnight is fast. We invent ways to use the CPU much well ahead of Moore's law. In another 50 years we'll be able to emulate dog vision! maybe... just run it overnight
(I'm speaking of the general library, this press release is just another algorithm added. They basically add common algorithms to the library, slowly.)
useful for visual effects work (Score:2, Interesting)
The other big headache is tracking a camera move. You basically feed the footage into a camera tracking program and define tracking points in the image; features in the frame which the computer follows as they move - the software uses a lot of maths to work out where in 3D space these 2D points are and creates a CG camera in your 3D app to match the move, you usually then have to build a rough proxy version of the set in 3D to go with it (unless the production has the bucks to spend and they get a LIDAR scan of the set). THEN you get to finally start putting in your 3D elements, that is if you haven't shat yourself and run out of the building screaming after a week or so of staring at the same bloody footage 10-12 hours a day...
Ahem... anyway - where this new system could come in useful is using depth perception to generate a z-buffer, which would allow the computer to isolate foreground and background objects - no need to blue screen you can just point and click an actor to get a matte. Tracking would be made easy(er, anyway) as you have an actual 3D plate to work with, feed it to one of those programs that can auto-model 3D geometry from photos and you get your proxy set for free too...
Big blue screen shoots are tough on actors, just ask anyone that worked on one of the new star wars movies. They have to spend hours waiting for the screens to be set-up and lit, and the choreography of shooting a scene with a digital character is painful to learn, not to mention the hassles and expense of shooting with a motion control camera. Not only would a system like this speed up production but presumably with a real-time z-buffer being generated the cast and crew could interact with lo-res versions of the CG characters in real-time on monitors to get a better feel of what they are doing.
In fact as a wider application, once we all have depth-percieving videophones you could matte in any image behind yourself you want - great for phoning in sick from the beach :)