On Tuesday, December 29th, High Fidelity announced that Stephen Wolfram has become their latest advisor.
British-born Stephen Wolfram is best known for his work in theoretical physics, mathematics and computer science. He began research in applied quantum field theory and particle physics and publish scientific papers when just 15 years old. By the age of 23, he was studying at the School of Natural Sciences of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, USA, where he conducted research into cellular automata using computer simulations.
When introducing Wolfram through the High Fidelity blog, Philip Rosedale notes this work had a profound impact on him, as did – later in life – Wolfram’s 2002 book, A New Kind of Science.
More recently, Wolfram has been responsible for WolframAlpha, an answer engine launched in 2009, and which is one of the systems used by both Microsoft’s Bing “decision engine” and also Apple’s Siri. In 2014, he launched the Wolfram Language as a new general multi-paradigm programming language.
In become an advisor to High Fidelity, Dr. Wolfram joins Peter Diamandis, the entrepreneur perhaps most well-known for the X-Prize Foundation, Dr. Adam Gazzaley, founder of the Gazzaley cognitive neuroscience research lab at the University of California, Tony Parisi, the co-creator of the VRML and X3D ISO standards for networked 3D graphics, and a 3D technology innovator, Professor Ken Perlin of the NYU Media Research Lab, and Professor Jeremy Bailenson, the director of Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab.
In their October update published at the start of November, High Fidelity followed-up on the work they’ve been putting into various elements of tracking movement, including the use of BinaryVR for tracking facial movement and expressions. In particular, the company’s software allows users to create a their own virtual 3D face from 2D facial photos, allowing them to track their facial animations in real-time, transforming them onto the CG representation of their face.
Integration of the BinaryVR software allows High Fidelity to track users’ mouth movements through their HMDs, allowing their avatars to mimic these movements in-world, as Chris Collins demonstrates in the update video. The company has also been extending the work in full body tracking, as seen in my October coverage of their work, and this is also demonstrated in the video alongside of more in-world object manipulation by avatars, with Chris and Ryan building a tower of blocks and Chris then picking up a gun and shooting it down.
The hand manipulation isn’t precise at this point in time, as can be seen in the video, but this isn’t the point; it’s the fact that in-world objects can be so freely manipulated that is impressive. That said, it would be interesting to see how this translates to building: how do you accurately sized a basic voxel (a sort-of primitive for those of us in SL) shape to a precise length and width, for example, without recourse to the keyboard or potentially complicated overlays?
Maybe the answer to this last point is “stay tuned!”.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 