Two Glimpses Into the Future

Tuesday, November 4, 2008 gave us 2 glimpses into the future. First, we found out who the next President is: Barack H. Obama Jr! Second, we saw the next iteration of remote conferencing technology: Holographic News Correspondents! I was blown away to see Anderson Cooper of CNN interviewing Will.I.AM. Anderson was in New York. Will.I.Am. was in Chicago. It was a Full, free-standing hologram, interacting in real-time! They even showed the hologram from the rear. Will.I.Am even did a little dance at the beginning and ending of the interview. It was like the hologram of Princess Leia projected by R2D2 in Star Wars Episode 4: A New Hope (1977,1997), only it wasn't blue. I thought it was a trick. But it seems that it was real. Also it turns out that they had used the technology earlier that day, when Wolf Blitzer interviewed Jessica Yellin. G4TV also reports that the very first time the technology has been used was in Australia:

This however, is not the first time this technology has been utilized. In May, Australian company Telstra "beamed" a hologram of its Chief Technology Officer from Melbourne to 460 miles away in Adelaide.

I scoured the Internet for about how the technology works. Gizmodo had the answer:

CNN's holographic election coverage is fancy pantsy, but how did they manage to send 3D 360 degree footage of virtual correspondent Jessica Yellin from Chicago all the way to the station's election center in NY? As Arthur C. Clarke says, Magic. A magic made possible from technology Vizrt and SportVu with the help of forty-four HD cameras and twenty computers. Here are the details.

On the subject's side:
• 35 HD cameras pointed at the subject in a ring
• Different cameras shoot at different angles (like the matrix), to transmit the entire body image
• The cameras are hooked up to the cameras in home base in NY, synchronizing the angles so perspective is right
• The system is set up in trailers outside Obama and McCain HQ
• Not only is it mechanical tracking via camera communication, there's infrared as well
• Correspondents see a 37-inch plasma where the return feed of the combined images are fed back to them. Useful for a misplaced hair or an unseemly boogar
• Twenty "computers" are crunching this data in order to make it usable

On the HQ side:
• Only used on two out of 40-something total camera feeds that CNN has
• Wolf Blitzer really loves it (or loves Jessica Yellin):

It's still Jessica Yellin and you look like Jessica Yellin and we know you are Jessica Yellin. I think a lot of people are nervous out there. All right, Jessica. You were a terrific hologram.

• The delay is either minimal, or we've gotten used to satellite delay that we don't even notice now
• An array of computers takes the crunched info feed from the subject's side in order to mesh it with the video from Wolf's side.
• Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the images are actually "projected" onto the floor of the CNN studio so that Wolf can actually talk to the person, you know, in a face to face. So it's not quite Star Wars just yet. Only after computers merge the video feeds together do you get a coherent hologram + person scenario

Here is a video of the system in action!!!

CNN debuts hologram @ Yahoo! Video

I want one of these!!!!