iPhone Hologram App: Total Nonsense, but still awesome

Okay, first off, this is bullshit: the iPhone’s motion sensor is not this sophisticated. And my smug satisfaction at having predicted that will have to be believed over proven: I swear, I knew it was crap even before I googled up this “developer” blog post about the whole deal.

That all said: boy, isn’t this neat? If it were real, it would be an excellent test bed for the next Viewtiful Joe game, to be sure.

1. [zuzu]

   ZOMG, David O’Reilly is my total fucking hero, both for this and for his Please Say Something animations. It’s like he creates the crack-cocaine of cyberpunk by cooking Aeon Flux shorts with the digital Swiss Graphic sterility of The Designers Republic.

   iHologram is almost as impressive (or as impressive, relative to the size of the device), as Johnny Chung Lee’s head tracking virtual 3D for the Wii (the thing that used IR LEDs in protective eyeglasses for an adaptive “window”).

2. [Anonymous]

   wow. thats a pretty cruel swipe at david’s work considering what boing boing has said about him before…

   http://www.boingboing.net/2008/01/10/bbtv-david-oreilly-v.html

3. [gabrielm]

   iPhone’s motion sensor is not this sophisticated

   It has nothing to do with the motion sensor (which is pretty darn good).

   Unlike Johnny Lee’s wii demo, the iPhone does not track the position of your head. In other words, this could work, but you would have to keep your head at just the right angle compared to the phone.

4. [Anonymous]

   http://www.davidoreilly.com/2008/08/ihologram

5. [Not a Doktor]

   wait, the iphone doesn’t have a compass, dose it?

6. [DrieStone]

   The accelerometers only detect a change in gravity (or g-forces) in three axis. There is no way for the phone to know if it’s being rotated when it’s lying on its back as shown in the video (because gravity is still pulling on the phone in the same direction the whole time). Cool and convincing, but impossible with the current hardware.

7. [zuzu]

   Unlike Johnny Lee’s wii demo, the iPhone does not track the position of your head. In other words, this could work, but you would have to keep your head at just the right angle compared to the phone.

   According to the site:
   

   The application works by assuming a constant viewing angle (35-45 degrees), typical for when the device is placed on a tabletop. The 3d scene’s perspective is warped using anamorphosis, the same technique used in Hans Holbein’s painting The Ambassadors. This application does the exact same but updates dynamically.

8. [gabrielm]

   OK – so it does look like the accelerometer doesn’t work on a horizontal phone. Still the app could be work if the phone was held vertical.

   The application works by assuming a constant viewing angle (35-45 degrees), typical for when the device is placed on a tabletop

   Bull – the angle matters, but the direction matters just as much with anamorphosis images.