Are We Closer to a ‘Matrix’-Style World?

Virtual reality technology is progressing rapidly thanks to advances in computing power and graphics, and some researchers believe a “Matrix”-style world where it is difficult to distinguish the real from the virtual is right around the corner. “We’ve reached a level now where we can make very realistic images: Five to 10 hours to make images more or less perfect, where people say, ‘Wow, that’s a photograph!’” boasts University of California at San Diego professor Henrik Wann Jensen. He says achieving the same level of photorealism in real-time animation is upcoming thanks to new graphics processors. Jensen is tackling the challenge of power efficiency by slashing the computational costs of photon mapping and ray-tracing algorithms. Whereas previous techniques sampled photons randomly across a light source, Jensen’s method maps the relevant photons along the light’s entire route, allowing a graphics interface to follow the light around a scene and measure the degree of light absorbed, reflected, or scattered by other objects. A notable achievement in touch-based interface technology has been facilitated by a professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute using magnetic levitation, in which a device hovers about its base using magnetic fields, while the position and orientation of a virtual object on a computer display can be manipulated by a handle. The object’s interaction with obstacles is simulated tactilely by haptic feedback generated by electrical coils. To advance technology that could lead to empathetic virtual characters, researchers have developed the Sensitive Artificial Listener, which can maintain a human-computer dialogue for prolonged periods by employing its sensitivity to non-linguistic signals as well as a repertoire of verbal and non-verbal cues and statements.
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MSNBC (05/05/08) Nelson, Bryn

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