In 1955, Walt Disney Imagineers achieved virtual reality with Disneyland. Eight Imagineering principles explain how they did it...
Eight Principles of Imagineering
According to Disney historian Alex Wright and contributors to The Imagineering Field Guide to Disneyland, Imagineering consists of the following eight basic principles.
1. Area Development: “The interstitial spaces between the attractions, restaurants, and shops. This includes landscaping, architecture, propping, show elements, and special enhancements intended to expand the experience.”
2. Blue Sky: “The early stages in the idea-generation process when anything is possible. There are not yet any considerations taken into account that might rein in the creative process. At this point, the sky’s the limit!”
3. Brainstorm: “A gathering for the purpose of generating as many ideas as possible in the shortest time possible. We hold many brainstorming sessions at WDI [Walt Disney Imagineering], always looking for the best ideas.” The rules include remembering that there is no such thing as a bad idea and that nothing should stifle the flow of ideas.
4. Dark Ride: “A term often used to describe the charming Fantasyland attractions, among others, housed more or less completely inside a show building, which allows for greater isolation of show elements and light control, as needed.”
5. Elevation: “A drawing of a true frontal view of an object—usually a building—often drawn from multiple sides, eliminating the perspective that you would see in the real world, for clarity in the design and to lead construction activities.”
6. Kinetics: “Movement and motion in a scene that give it life and energy. This can come from moving vehicles, active signage, changes in lighting, special effects, or even hanging banners or flags that move as the wind blows.”
7. Plussing: “A word derived from Walt’s penchant for always trying to make an idea better. Imagineers are continually trying to plus work, even after it’s ‘finished.’”
8. Show: “Everything we put ‘onstage’ in a Disney park. Walt believed that everything we put out for the Guests in our parks was part of a big show, so much of our terminology originated in the show business world. With that in mind, ‘show’ becomes for us a very broad term that includes just about anything our Guests see, hear, smell, or come in contact with during their visit to any of our parks or resorts.”
Source: The Imagineering Field Guide to Disneyland by Alex Wright and the Imagineers (Disney Editions, 2008).
Now Is the Time for the Future
At the entrance to the original 1955 Tomorrowland, the first attraction to come into view was a tall clock structure. This was the Clock of the World, which declared that now is the time for the future. This clock was intended to symbolize the incredible futuristic world about to be entered. Standing more than 17 feet tall, the clock looked much like a squeezed soda can topped with a half sphere, gold-spiked anodized aluminum sun and a stylized silver crescent Man in the Moon face. The blue tiles encircling its base depicted the vast universe.
Few passersby stopped to notice that the timepiece showed not only the time in Anaheim, California, but also around the world. Other than serving as a convenient place for parents to meet their kids, the clock rapidly faded into obscurity. The towering red-and-white TWA Rocket was a much more-remembered symbol of Tomorrowland.
The Clock of the World is now gone, with only some first-generation Disneylanders able to recall it. The clock continued to faithfully perform its timekeeping duties until it was removed in 1966, along with the widespread demolition of the original 1955 Tomorrowland. The exiting of the clock was captured in a photo showing the timepiece, minus its top ornamentation, being hauled away with the lower edge of its blue “universe” mosaic tiles broken off at the base.
Sometimes the future can be treated rather shabbily.
Imagineering Realism And Fantasy
To realize his Disneyland vision, Walt Disney assembled a talented team of Imagineers, who would transform ideas and dreams into reality. Looking up at the second-floor windows along Disneyland’s Main Street, you can see painted signs with the names of people and their businesses. While the businesses are somewhat fictitious, the people are not. These are names of Imagineers—such as Harper Goff, Ken Anderson, Herb Ryman, and Sam McKim —and others who played significant roles in making Disneyland happen. Even Walt Disney’s father, Elias Disney, has a window with his name painted on it with “Contractor Est. 1895” listed.
Goff, with his background in designing movie sets, would lend a hand with Main Street and the Jungle Cruise ride. Anderson, trained as an architect and all-around designer, worked on many last-minute Disneyland projects. Ryman, a versatile artist who rendered the dazzling overview of Disneyland in 1953, would later help conceptualize New Orleans Square. McKim, a multitalented artist, rendered concept sketches for Disneyland and other Disney projects.
These and many other Imagineers to follow helped dream and bring Disneyland into existence.
VISIONS: Imagineers in Search of the Future
Gary Dehrer
The Futurist
March-April 2011
http://www.wfs.org/content/visions-imagineers-search-future
Showing posts with label Virtual Reality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Virtual Reality. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Immortality only 20 years away says scientist
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/6217676/Immortality-only-20-years-away-says-scientist.htmlImmortality only 20 years away says scientist
Scientist Ray Kurzweil claims humans could become immortal in as little as 20 years' time through nanotechnology and an increased understanding of how the body works.
By Amy Willis
22 Sep 2009
Ray Kurzweil claims we could all be cyborgs in 20 years.
The 61-year-old American, who has predicted new technologies arriving before, says our understanding of genes and computer technology is accelerating at an incredible rate.
He says theoretically, at the rate our understanding is increasing, nanotechnologies capable of replacing many of our vital organs could be available in 20 years time.
Mr Kurzweil adds that although his claims may seem far-fetched, artificial pancreases and neural implants are already available.
Mr Kurzweil calls his theory the Law of Accelerating Returns. Writing in The Sun, Mr Kurzweil said: "I and many other scientists now believe that in around 20 years we will have the means to reprogramme our bodies' stone-age software so we can halt, then reverse, ageing. Then nanotechnology will let us live for ever.
"Ultimately, nanobots will replace blood cells and do their work thousands of times more effectively.
"Within 25 years we will be able to do an Olympic sprint for 15 minutes without taking a breath, or go scuba-diving for four hours without oxygen.
"Heart-attack victims – who haven't taken advantage of widely available bionic hearts – will calmly drive to the doctors for a minor operation as their blood bots keep them alive.
"Nanotechnology will extend our mental capacities to such an extent we will be able to write books within minutes.
"If we want to go into virtual-reality mode, nanobots will shut down brain signals and take us wherever we want to go. Virtual sex will become commonplace. And in our daily lives, hologram like figures will pop in our brain to explain what is happening.
"So we can look forward to a world where humans become cyborgs, with artificial limbs and organs."
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Going Down The Rabbit Hole
http://www.good.is/post/going-down-the-rabbit-hole/
Going Down The Rabbit Hole
GOOD
April 7, 2009
The future of transportation may mean not moving at all.
Ray Kurzweil, an inventor and technology theorist, envisions a future in which advances in nanotechnology, genetics, and robotics give us immortality; clean, free energy; and a completely new definition of mobility. Think plug-in electric cars and maglev trains are the transportation innovations of tomorrow? Kurzweil is looking quite a bit further down the road.
GOOD: How will technological advances change transportation in the 21st century?
Ray Kurzweil: For starters, we will replace a lot of transportation with the ability to meet each other in virtual reality. I give about a third of my speeches around the world using a virtual-communication system that allows me to appear at a venue in three dimensions and in real time. My image is three-dimensional, life-sized, and fully realistic. As I move around, the audience sees their local background behind me.
Ultimately, virtual reality will be extremely realistic and incorporate all of the senses. If we go out to around 2030, we will be able to send someone an information file (as an email attachment, for example) and they will “print” it out in three dimensions to create virtually any three-dimensional object, such as a computer, a solar panel, a module to build housing, food, or clothing. This will replace most of the transportation needed to ship products.
G: So we’ll have realistic virtual reality and the ability to print three-dimensional products at home. Will travel be altogether obsolete in the future? What’s the time line for this happening?
RK: During the teen years of this century we will use high-resolution image beamers in our glasses to beam images directly to our retinas to create full-immersion visual virtual-reality environments, and use comparable devices for the audio component. Since most business interactions are visual and auditory, this will meet most business needs for meetings.
By the late 2020s, nanobots in our brain (that will get there noninvasively, through the capillaries) will create full-immersion virtual-reality environments from within the nervous system. So if you want to go into virtual reality the nanobots shut down the signals coming from your real senses and replace them with the signals that your brain would be receiving if you were actually in the virtual environment. So this will provide full-immersion virtual reality incorporating all of the senses. You will have a body in these virtual-reality environments that you can control just like your real body, but it does not need to be the same body that you have in real reality. We’ll be able to interact with people in any way in these virtual-reality environments. That will replace most travel, but we’ll also have new travel technologies for our real bodies using nanotechnology.
G: Wow. Well, in the near term, President Obama is talking about converting the federal fleet to hybrid cars and spending $8 billion on high-speed rail. Given the radical changes you envision, does this focus on hybrid cars and high-speed trains seem shortsighted to you?
RK: It’s not shortsighted. These are constructive steps and bring us closer to a world of clean energy. Twenty years from now we will be able to get all of the energy we need from very inexpensive nanoengineered solar panels and store the energy in small, decentralized nanoengineered fuel cells. Solar power is, in fact, doubling every two years and has been for 20 years, and we are only eight doublings away from it meeting 100 percent of the world’s energy needs. And we have 10,000 times more sunlight than we need to do this. But we cannot simply implement a circa-2029 infrastructure today. We should use today’s technology aggressively to meet challenges such as clean energy.
“By the late 2020s, nanobots in our brain will create full-immersion virtual-reality environments from within the nervous system. That will replace most travel.”
G: As you say, we’re stuck with 2009 infrastructure for now, and it’s built for the automobile. What do you see as the future of the car?
RK: Our personal vehicle will depend on the era. Within a decade, cars will communicate with each other, avoiding accidents. Some navigation systems are already taking current traffic patterns into account. That will be ubiquitous quite soon. In the 2030s, we will have personal flying vehicles that use nanoengineered microwings.
G: What do you see as the future of travel in space?
RK: We will continue to explore space as an engineering challenge and as a way of exploring our part of the universe. But space travel will be of strategic importance to our human-machine civilization in the 22nd century. At that point, we will have exhausted the resources on Earth and will move out into the rest of the universe. For the most part, we won’t be sending out missions of squishy creatures but rather swarms of nanobots.
G: What future transportation challenges are we failing to anticipate right now?
RK: Right now, transportation is a major contributor to the negative environmental effects of energy usage (and I believe we should be looking at the full range of these environmental issues and not just greenhouse gases). But as I said, we will be less reliant on transportation as virtual reality becomes more realistic.
Going Down The Rabbit Hole
GOOD
April 7, 2009
The future of transportation may mean not moving at all.
Ray Kurzweil, an inventor and technology theorist, envisions a future in which advances in nanotechnology, genetics, and robotics give us immortality; clean, free energy; and a completely new definition of mobility. Think plug-in electric cars and maglev trains are the transportation innovations of tomorrow? Kurzweil is looking quite a bit further down the road.
GOOD: How will technological advances change transportation in the 21st century?
Ray Kurzweil: For starters, we will replace a lot of transportation with the ability to meet each other in virtual reality. I give about a third of my speeches around the world using a virtual-communication system that allows me to appear at a venue in three dimensions and in real time. My image is three-dimensional, life-sized, and fully realistic. As I move around, the audience sees their local background behind me.
Ultimately, virtual reality will be extremely realistic and incorporate all of the senses. If we go out to around 2030, we will be able to send someone an information file (as an email attachment, for example) and they will “print” it out in three dimensions to create virtually any three-dimensional object, such as a computer, a solar panel, a module to build housing, food, or clothing. This will replace most of the transportation needed to ship products.
G: So we’ll have realistic virtual reality and the ability to print three-dimensional products at home. Will travel be altogether obsolete in the future? What’s the time line for this happening?
RK: During the teen years of this century we will use high-resolution image beamers in our glasses to beam images directly to our retinas to create full-immersion visual virtual-reality environments, and use comparable devices for the audio component. Since most business interactions are visual and auditory, this will meet most business needs for meetings.
By the late 2020s, nanobots in our brain (that will get there noninvasively, through the capillaries) will create full-immersion virtual-reality environments from within the nervous system. So if you want to go into virtual reality the nanobots shut down the signals coming from your real senses and replace them with the signals that your brain would be receiving if you were actually in the virtual environment. So this will provide full-immersion virtual reality incorporating all of the senses. You will have a body in these virtual-reality environments that you can control just like your real body, but it does not need to be the same body that you have in real reality. We’ll be able to interact with people in any way in these virtual-reality environments. That will replace most travel, but we’ll also have new travel technologies for our real bodies using nanotechnology.
G: Wow. Well, in the near term, President Obama is talking about converting the federal fleet to hybrid cars and spending $8 billion on high-speed rail. Given the radical changes you envision, does this focus on hybrid cars and high-speed trains seem shortsighted to you?
RK: It’s not shortsighted. These are constructive steps and bring us closer to a world of clean energy. Twenty years from now we will be able to get all of the energy we need from very inexpensive nanoengineered solar panels and store the energy in small, decentralized nanoengineered fuel cells. Solar power is, in fact, doubling every two years and has been for 20 years, and we are only eight doublings away from it meeting 100 percent of the world’s energy needs. And we have 10,000 times more sunlight than we need to do this. But we cannot simply implement a circa-2029 infrastructure today. We should use today’s technology aggressively to meet challenges such as clean energy.
“By the late 2020s, nanobots in our brain will create full-immersion virtual-reality environments from within the nervous system. That will replace most travel.”
G: As you say, we’re stuck with 2009 infrastructure for now, and it’s built for the automobile. What do you see as the future of the car?
RK: Our personal vehicle will depend on the era. Within a decade, cars will communicate with each other, avoiding accidents. Some navigation systems are already taking current traffic patterns into account. That will be ubiquitous quite soon. In the 2030s, we will have personal flying vehicles that use nanoengineered microwings.
G: What do you see as the future of travel in space?
RK: We will continue to explore space as an engineering challenge and as a way of exploring our part of the universe. But space travel will be of strategic importance to our human-machine civilization in the 22nd century. At that point, we will have exhausted the resources on Earth and will move out into the rest of the universe. For the most part, we won’t be sending out missions of squishy creatures but rather swarms of nanobots.
G: What future transportation challenges are we failing to anticipate right now?
RK: Right now, transportation is a major contributor to the negative environmental effects of energy usage (and I believe we should be looking at the full range of these environmental issues and not just greenhouse gases). But as I said, we will be less reliant on transportation as virtual reality becomes more realistic.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
The headset that will mimic all five senses
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1159206/The-headset-mimic-senses-make-virtual-world-convincing-real-life.htmlRevealed: The headset that will mimic all five senses and make the virtual world as convincing as real life
By David Derbyshire
05th March 2009
A virtual reality helmet that recreates the sights, smells, sounds and even tastes of far-flung destinations has been devised by British scientists.The device will allow users a life-like experience of places such as Kenya's Masai Mara while sitting on their sofa.
They can also enjoy the smell of flowers in an Alpine meadow or feel the heat of the Caribbean sun on their face.
Scientists say the device will also enable users to greet friends and family on the other side of the world as though they were in the same room.
And students will even be able to find out what it was like to live in ancient Egypt, Rome or Greece.
Previously, scientists have only been able to use virtual reality technology to recreate sound and vision.
Now a team of British academics from York and Warwick universities are creating a virtual reality helmet they are calling the Virtual Cocoon.
They say it stimulates the senses so convincingly they have called the experience Real Virtuality.
The prototype helmet connects wirelessly to a computer which feeds it information about a virtual world or another part of the real world.
It features a high-definition high dynamic screen - which produces pictures ten times darker, or 30 times brighter than conventional television.
A tube connected to a box of chemicals releases smells under the wearer's nose, while a similar device can spray flavours directly into the mouth and provide a texture sensation.
The heat and humidity can be changed using a fan and heater, while surround-sound speakers recreate ambient noise.
Professor Alan Chalmers, of Warwick University, said the headset should be ready within five years.
He believes it will be used in long-distance business meetings, in schools to allow students to revisit history, or by families wanting to get a taste of exotic destinations.
It is also likely to be popular among computer gamers, particularly those who enjoy virtual roleplay games such as Second Life.
'The idea is not to replace reality but to complement it,' Professor Chalmers said at an event organised by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.
He believes it will be possible too to explore other parts of the world in real time.
For example, a device attached to a car on safari could record the sights, smells, sounds and heat and transmit the sensations over the internet to a Virtual Cocoon on the other side of the world.
Professor David Howard of the University of York said: 'VR projects have typically only focused on one or two of the five senses - usually sight and hearing.
'We're not aware of any other research group anywhere else in the world doing what we plan to do.'
The helmet could also be used in training soldiers, police officers, medical staff or firemen.
Initial estimates suggest the helmet will cost around £1,500.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Virtual reality out-of-body experiences
http://tech.monstersandcritics.com/news/article_1347212.php/Virtual_reality_used_to_create_out-of-body_experiences
Virtual reality used to create out-of-body experiences
By Stevie Smith
Aug 24, 2007
Somewhat creepy tech-related news today that follows the exploits of scientists at University College London who have successfully created the sensation that people are said to feel during an ‘out-of-body’ episode, reports the Guardian Unlimited.
An out-of-body experience could be described as when a completely conscious person is suddenly able to view their body as if it were a completely separate entity. Some claim the phenomenon to be indicative of a brush with death, and it has been reported that moments of out-of-body existence do occur during times of extreme physical trauma, drug abuse, epilepsy, or when brain function has been compromised following a cerebrovascular incident (a stroke).
Dr. Henrik Ehrsson, a neuroscientist that headed the experiments to recreate the out-of-body sensation, points out that while such experiences have indeed been reported as occurring across a variety of clinical situations, understanding of the out-of-body phenomenon is still unclear from the point of view of neuroscience.
"Out-of body-experiences have fascinated mankind for millennia," explained Dr. Ehrsson, who is now based at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, "their existence has raised fundamental questions about the relationship between human consciousness and the body, and has been much discussed in theology, philosophy and psychology."
However, using perfectly healthy volunteers, Dr. Ehrsson and his team claim to have utilised a system of cameras hooked up to a head-mounted VR display in order to help analyse exactly how the human brain processes exterior information to accurately determine body positioning – and thus recreated a form of out-of-body experience.
Normal circumstances see the brain processing sensory information passed to it from the body in order to formulate and build a sense of where the body is physically located in space. Through the application of jumbled sensory inputs during the experiment, Dr. Ehrsson wanted to test whether the human brain could be fooled into thinking the body was in a completely different location, adding weight to the notion that errors in the brain’s processing of sensory information causes out-of-body experiences.
Willing volunteers first donned virtual reality googles, which contained a video screen situated in each eye. These two screens then received separate images via camera units pointed at the volunteer from behind. The brain, upon processing and combining both of these images, subsequently caused the participant to firmly believe they were actually viewing a three-dimensional image of their own body.
Other physical experiments combining both the camera system and display goggles with the application of physical touch also caused participants to believe they were watching interaction with themselves from across the room. Dr. Ehrsson believes that such techniques, apart from aiding in the scientific understanding of out-of-body experiences, could have a significant bearing on the likes of medical and videogame technology.
Describing the technique as a form of projection or teleportation, Dr. Ehrsson offered that it could potentially see videogame interaction reaching a level far beyond current achievements while doctors could even perform remote surgery through the control of their virtual selves: "If we can project people into a virtual character, so they feel and respond as if they were really in a virtual version of themselves, just imagine the implications."
Virtual reality used to create out-of-body experiences
By Stevie Smith
Aug 24, 2007
Somewhat creepy tech-related news today that follows the exploits of scientists at University College London who have successfully created the sensation that people are said to feel during an ‘out-of-body’ episode, reports the Guardian Unlimited.
An out-of-body experience could be described as when a completely conscious person is suddenly able to view their body as if it were a completely separate entity. Some claim the phenomenon to be indicative of a brush with death, and it has been reported that moments of out-of-body existence do occur during times of extreme physical trauma, drug abuse, epilepsy, or when brain function has been compromised following a cerebrovascular incident (a stroke).
Dr. Henrik Ehrsson, a neuroscientist that headed the experiments to recreate the out-of-body sensation, points out that while such experiences have indeed been reported as occurring across a variety of clinical situations, understanding of the out-of-body phenomenon is still unclear from the point of view of neuroscience.
"Out-of body-experiences have fascinated mankind for millennia," explained Dr. Ehrsson, who is now based at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, "their existence has raised fundamental questions about the relationship between human consciousness and the body, and has been much discussed in theology, philosophy and psychology."
However, using perfectly healthy volunteers, Dr. Ehrsson and his team claim to have utilised a system of cameras hooked up to a head-mounted VR display in order to help analyse exactly how the human brain processes exterior information to accurately determine body positioning – and thus recreated a form of out-of-body experience.
Normal circumstances see the brain processing sensory information passed to it from the body in order to formulate and build a sense of where the body is physically located in space. Through the application of jumbled sensory inputs during the experiment, Dr. Ehrsson wanted to test whether the human brain could be fooled into thinking the body was in a completely different location, adding weight to the notion that errors in the brain’s processing of sensory information causes out-of-body experiences.
Willing volunteers first donned virtual reality googles, which contained a video screen situated in each eye. These two screens then received separate images via camera units pointed at the volunteer from behind. The brain, upon processing and combining both of these images, subsequently caused the participant to firmly believe they were actually viewing a three-dimensional image of their own body.
Other physical experiments combining both the camera system and display goggles with the application of physical touch also caused participants to believe they were watching interaction with themselves from across the room. Dr. Ehrsson believes that such techniques, apart from aiding in the scientific understanding of out-of-body experiences, could have a significant bearing on the likes of medical and videogame technology.
Describing the technique as a form of projection or teleportation, Dr. Ehrsson offered that it could potentially see videogame interaction reaching a level far beyond current achievements while doctors could even perform remote surgery through the control of their virtual selves: "If we can project people into a virtual character, so they feel and respond as if they were really in a virtual version of themselves, just imagine the implications."
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