Beer IN 3-D!
The future of advertising (at least until we’re all wearing spex .)
Three-dimensional foaming glasses of beer could soon leap out of TV screens and on to bars, to try to tempt customers into buying drinks. The system, from X3D Technologies in New York City, allows the virtual drinks to jump up to a metre in front of the screen. They can be viewed with the naked eye from anything up to a 120 degree angle. [… X3D’s] 53-inch plasma-screens are already being used to make shampoo bottles loom in front of customers in shops in France, Italy and Spain.
And here I thought it was the porn industry that was supposed to always be on the leading edge of new technologies. I’m very disappointed in them right now.
Actually, porn is finding that some new technologies are working against it, at least for the moment. High-definition TV is capapble of exposing a lot of the wrinkles, bumps, spots, and other flaws that have up until now been camouflaged by makeup and lighting. Until digital enhancement gets better and cheaper, they're going to have a hard time maintianing the illusion of perfect bodies.
Of course, it's not only porn that faces this problem. TV newscasters may have been the first to realize this unintended consequence of hyperreal broadcasting. I remember a story from a decade or more ago that mentioned a TV news desk that had a "brass" logo on the front. It was actually made out of wood painted in a gold color, but this had looked convincing on color televisions for the past thirty years. High definition pictures, however, exposed it as the cheap fake it was.
The TV and film illusionists will overcome these problems before long, I'm sure. There were similar challenges in the transition from black and white to color pictures, and before that, from silent films to "talkies".
Posted by Jimcat on March 25 2004 05:27