Star Trek Archive Brought to Life in Immersive 3D Tribute to Creator Gene Roddenberry
Together with the Roddenberry Estate, IDEA member OTOY has made it possible for Star Trek fans to experience Gene Roddenberry’s original vision for the franchise in 1964. During this year’s Creation Las Vegas, they revealed the first previews of the Roddenberry Archive — a memorialization of the entirety of Gene Roddenberry’s life, legacy and creative works, including a real-time, fully interactive and immersive collection of ever-growing 3D datasets that are all presented at 1:1 scale.
In addition to physical assets filmed for real-world TV or film productions, the archive also includes in-universe conceptualizations for how items, ships or the show’s other props would behave inside the narrative universe. Perhaps the most striking of these is a life-size digital recreation of the Starship Enterprise as Gene Roddenberry had originally envisioned it in the show’s pilot, “The Cage.”
TIME Lists Best Inventions of 2022
In TIME’s list of Best of Inventions of 2022, they say there are two types of innovations: “the ones you see coming and the ones that blow your mind.” And, they say, Light Field Lab’s SolidLight modular holographic system is of the mind blowing type.
Congratulation to IDEA Member Light Field Lab for making the list!
IDEA Member, CableLabs Showcases future of Immersive Media at SCTE Expo
Attendance at SCTE Cable-Tec Expo 2022 actually surpassed the attendance at the last Cable-Tec Expo in 2019, meaning it outperformed most other live shows in the last year — on average trade shows are only getting about 65% attendance compared to pre-pandemic years. By all accounts the show was hugely successful and included an opening day session in front of a packed house of thousands of attendees.
IDEA member company CableLabs was quite active, providing a glimpse into the future of content consumption at their booth, with a demo of the 3D holographic display from Looking Glass Factory, another IDEA member.
The 10G Challenge
A year ago, CableLabs issued a challenge to individuals and organizations to think big – they launched the 10G Challenge, asking innovators to imagine technologies that the emerging 10G network will make possible. At SCTE Cable-Tec Expo 2022 they announced the winners, those with the outstanding ideas to leverage the four pillars of the multi-gigabit platform: faster internet speeds, better security, lower latency, and improved reliability. Notably, almost all the winning entries involved some kind of immersive experience. Here are the winners:
Grand Prize Winner: MediView XR leverages advanced virtual reality (VR) technology to help patients in rural areas access care from National Cancer Institute-designated cancer centers without having to leave their community.
IDEA Joins Metaverse Standards Forum
The first full sentence on the website of the Metaverse Standards Forum states: “Multiple industry leaders have stated that the potential of the metaverse will be best realized if it is built on a foundation of open standards.” That basic principle of open standards falls right in line with the basic attitudes and beliefs of IDEA, and so it is appropriate and fitting that IDEA become a member and participate in this organization. We believe our work at IDEA in developing image format specifications dovetails into the general concept of the metaverse and we believe our participation will further the goals of IDEA while presenting our efforts in a broader context.
IDEA Chairman Pete Ludé explained: “It’s exciting to see the mission started by IDEA nearly four years ago is coming into focus across such a wide range of innovators. The IDEA team is really looking forward to collaborating with other media technologists to pave the way toward an immersive future”.
Industry News
Google’s Project Starline Rises Again
The status of Project Starline, Google’s 3D video calling booths had been somewhat in doubt for the last year. The project had been wrapped up in a reorganization at Google a year ago, involving Google’s AR and VR initiatives along with the internal R&D group known as Area 120. Then in September, Google drastically cut Area 120 projects, leaving the state of Project Starline unknown. Even within the company, people weren’t sure if the project was still around.
Fast forward to October this year, and we find Google announcing expansion of real-world tests. An early access program will see Starline being used in the offices of various Google enterprise partners, including Salesforce, WeWork, T-Mobile and Hackensack Meridian Health.
As we near the close of 2022, the one thing that remains constant seems to be the increasing number of news stories involving holograms, 3D immersive tech, and the metaverse. Just about every sector of life seems to be in-play as far as being touched by this trend.
Here’s a sampling of what we spotted in the last few months.
