simon@cuisun.unige.ch (01/19/91)
At the University of Geneva we're working on a
prototype of what we call a "virtual museum". Basically
the idea is to take a 3d model of some museum layout
and a video disk containing clips of museum artifacts.
We plan to use some video special effects hardware to
transform and merge the video signal with the rendered
museum model (one problem is that this equipment can be
very expensive, I've seen prices from about $50,000 to ten
times that, but it can do fantastic things like real-time
texture mapping of a video signal onto a 3d object).
Anyway, I was wondering if anyone else was working on trying
to enrich VRs with video. (There's a short paper describing
this in a bit more detail that I can make available
if there's interest.)
Somewhat related to this, there's an issue that might have
some future impact on the commercial use of VRs. I saw an article
in the Wall Street Journal last week (sorry, I don't have
the exact date) entitled: "Gates Quietly Bids for the
Electronic Rights to Works of Art." I'm not sure if this
has been discussed before in this newsgroup, but it would
be interesting to explore how the legal concept of ownership
can be (or whether it should be) extended to VR objects.
- Simon Gibbs
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Simon Gibbs
Centre Universitaire d'Informatique
12 rue du Lac, Geneva 1207
SWITZERLAND
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