UR-82060:
Your mission is over.
Good night.
Past glory may condense
into a worn out vigniette of the future
and pitiful witnesses’ rants.
There’s a calmer patch of sky for you.
— There will be.
Your vapour trails,
tracing humanity’s pursuit of progress and solidarity,
your constructors’ dreams.
Your thruster flames,
colouring fairy tales of our descendants,
living under, towards, and amid the stars,
and bringing them closer.
Like how the people in the Star Wars universe take for granted, I want to bring hologram video calling into reality (albeit mono-directionally for the time being), using the current video conferencing infrastructure, and keeping the finished product as open-source as possible.
Executively speaking, this project makes use of a typical pyramidal hologram projector and real-time video stream synthesis using OpenCV and Python. It will be broken down into three (four) distinct tasks.
The first page of my early notes is attached.
(Code and design blueprints will be available on GitHub after the design phase ends)
Trivial.
Not yet implemented.
Not yet implemented. I have 4 idevices that can at least capture at 1080p.
6 Feb 2022
I used OpenCV to stitch four feeds together and broadcast the result into Zoom as a virtual camera. Before further optimization efforts, I currently make use of a transparent PNG of a right-isosceles triangle.
Using this picture, pixels in the video feeds whose coordinates match the mask is transparent are discarded, and the resulting four triangles are combined using Numpy magic.
The inner shadow effects may be able to be multiplied back into the video stream and provide a vignette effect, but that is not implemented in the current pipeline.
In all, the system can output 1080 × 1080 images like this at slightly over 50 frames per second.
And here’s the synthesized feed on a receiving Internet terminal, static but refreshing at 30 FPS.
They say you find a lively memory
of a world’s early ages
deep within.
Shapes without colours
colours without shapes.
Endeavours without maps,
vision without eyes.
To rejoin the silence was to speak;
to leave behind all lights was to see.
Feel the pristine ground.
Touch the running water.
Does a fire burn afar?
Do you hear the shadows flicker?
For all our ignorance,
— and wonder we hence pursuit —
is but a cave
And someone carved out the gaps
through which starlight shone.
(January 2022, Westport)
A memory.
A yearning.
A wish.
A service.
A product.
A prompt for grandiose visions.
An entrance to elaborate fraud.
A remnant of creation.
A backdrop of being.
A catalyst of love.
A state.
A stage.
A taste.
Away.
Yourong Frank Wang 