Re: [photo-3d] Showscan

[Bob Wier <wier@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>The movie was "Brainstorm", and I believe the compromise was made by going
>to full wide-screen for the "mind-movie" (?) sections, which translates on
>video to being more of a squeezed fisheye look. Unfortunately, I never saw
>it in theaters.
>
  Yup - Brainstorm was it. I found the heart attack scene wrenching...
it was pretty intense when seen in a theater. Since Natalie died during the
filming, they had to re-write goodly portions as I understand it, in order
to use that part already in the can. I was impressed since the "virtual
reality" information was supposedly recorded by scanning using a laser on
a silver film that appeared holographic which moved like a videotape and
was also several inches (maybe) in width. A pretty reasonable guess given
the "bandwidth" required to generate audio/visual/smell/touch playback.
There was one part where they disconnected the touch playback because
it was putting too much stress on the person receiving the playback.
A fairly reasonable guess, given the date. The idea was a direct feed
to the brain using electrical signals. It was also interesting because
as the technology was developed, the playback headset progressed from
big clunky models to increasingly sleeker and smaller models - a nice
nod to progressive industrial design and refinement (like my original
Motorola cell phone which you carried aound in a bag to my ounce size
Nokia which is digital and includes a bunch of features which weren't
even options on the Motorola back in 1994). Too bad that the "VR" portions
weren't in stereo and at the high frame rate!

>Wasn't Showscan  Douglas Trumbull's baby (Special Effects for "2001", "Close

   Yup - Doug Trumbull was the one. 

>psychologically began to look like video at that speed, as the frame
>"flicker" is well beyond persistence of vision (which was the whole idea in
   Aha - I'd never heard that, but it makes sense ...

>BTW, anyone remember the name John Dykstra?

No doubt about it. He's cited in both my operating systems text and
the one I use in my survey of languages book (if you mean the CS person).

--BW

              Bob Wier
     mailto:wier@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
   23:50 GMT Monday, February 19, 2001
    Rocky Mountain College, Billings MT.
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