Archive for October, 2008

Touched echo

Monday, October 13th, 2008


Those who visit Brühl’s Terrace in Germany are set to get more than just pretty view.  Markus Kison’s touched echo brings life to the 1945 Dresden air raids. Visitors to the area can hear the airplanes, explosions and air raid sirens of the 13th of February raids though four small, disguised sound conductors.  Using a swinging balustrade, the railing conductors transfer sound though bone conduction, directly from the arm bone through to the inner ear.

testing the mail system

Saturday, October 4th, 2008


Thats cool, testing the mail system by making a coded envelope.

Illustrator Harriet Russell has been testing the patience and willpower of the UK’s Royal Mail postal service with a series of coded envelopes. As part of her studies at the Glasgow School of Art, the young artist set about disguising her address within puzzles, illustrations, anagrams, crosswords, maps and optical illusions.  The illustrator’s initial experiment contained a mirror image of her address.  The envelope arrived at her door within standard local delivery time.

flying against real planes

Friday, October 3rd, 2008

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Sky Challenge wants to create a new massive sport, one that would allow you to race against real stunt airplanes, flying through virtual doughnuts and gates up in the real sky. To do that, they are using a mix of technologies that that allow real planes to be precisely tracked, as well as letting real world pilots see the course and the computer planes around them. Here’s how it works:

• The real world scenario is introduced in the computer and a race course is programmed.
• The real planes use a Global Positioning System combined with an Inertial Navigation System, which is needed to compensate for the lack of accuracy in the GPS. This is critical while doing acrobatic maneuvers because the GPS can’t get a clear signal at that time.
• The tracking information is then relayed to the servers, where it gets integrated in the virtual gaming grid.
• Simultaneously, the virtual planes position is sent to the real airplanes, where the pilots can see where the other planes and obstacles are located.

check the vids on the following links:

http://www.skychallenge.com/test-flight-video

http://gizmodo.com/5059602/real-pilots-racing-against-virtual-airplanes-will-bring-simulators-to-a-new-level