Some Friday afternoon fun; here's a terrific short film for us CAD/ Scifi fans:
"World Builder " by Bruce Banit. "A strange man builds a world using holographic tools for the woman he loves."
Many folks seem to call these interfaces "Minority Report" type (after the 2002 film of that name, which was in-turn based on the 1956 short story by genius author, Philip K. Dick - which ironically didn't feature any such interface at all!). Now, I'm not sure if this is quite the interface for the next version of Bentley Structural (or even version 100!).But the idea of haptic interfaces isn't new and is all around us (e.g. - the Nintendo Wii in my living room or the touchscreen on my iPhone). I'd argue even the humble mouse interface was a bigger leap forward in this direction that getting from now to what is shown as the holographic interface in this video. And as these tools find more practical uses, they will likely find their way into the interfaces of CAD software like Microstation and modeling tools like Bentley Structural.
But, in the meantime, we can let the futurist writers of science fiction tell us nice little stories like this with great visual effects.
Like, when dowsing with rods, you begin to get a sort of rotating sensation 'inside' your head, that does same job as the rods' movement. It's always the neuro system doing the 'knowing'; it can be programmed by intention to cause a microscopic forearm-rotating muscle response that that the rods under gravity then amplify to visibility.
Marvelous animation!
Here'S something else. A talk by Paul Wolpe on the bioengineering.
Check out the artificial arm control starting from minute 13:00.
www.ted.com/.../paul_root_wolpe_it_s_time_to_question_bio_engineering.html
Once you know that brain activated control is possible, you can then start to actually skip the entire interface. Real hand movement is no longer needed. Scary.
I am a true believer after seeing this.The boundaries for Bentley Structural are limitless and I can only wish that I could be involved in this type of production. How exciting. I can't wait to spread the word to my group suggesting that they look carefully at the actor using his pallette to place, stretch, copy and add materials.
Charlie
That is an awesome video. It's like climbing inside of MicroStation and using solid modeling/feature modeling from the inside. Oh, that and performing rendering operations like materials assignments on the fly. Too bad the story is so bittersweet.