3pointD.com

The New York Times writes about “a missing link between cyberspace and the physical world” that comes in the form of a very 3pointD a GPS-enabled cell phone available in Japan that ties geolocative information into Internet-based data about your surroundings.

If you stand on a street corner in Tokyo today you can point a specialized cellphone at a hotel, a restaurant or a historical monument, and with the press of a button the phone will display information from the Internet describing the object you are looking at. . . . The phones combine satellite-based navigation, precise to within 30 feet or less, with an electronic compass to provide a new dimension of orientation. Connect the device to the Internet and it is possible to overlay the point-and-click simplicity of a computer screen on top of the real world.

(more…)

Just stumbled on Realscan 3D, a company that does “mobile 3D scanning.” It sounds like they have a fast and accurate way of creating animatable 3D models by scanning real-life objects, including people. The company has done work for movies, and for game-makers Nintendo and Midway, among other people. Their technology apparently gets all the information it needs within a matter of seconds, in many cases. I’m sure it’s dead expensive still, but it’s interesting in terms of the ability to get reproductions of real objects into virtual worlds.