Technology Milestones

Our very own Matt Stewart and Anthony Palma have been performing inception: putting the physical world (the star) made digital (a camera feed) inside a virtual world (on the iPad) all held by a guest in the physical world! Whew! They wrote up a modest summary of their achievements:

We are in the process of integrating network cameras to an iPad. During our show experience for the guest, the iPad will need to stream a live feed from the correct camera to present the child with a view of their star in the tower. In the week prior to GDC, we were able to successfully create this instance in our virtual world on the iPad. The hurdle came in working with Unity, which requires a stream of finite length. To accomplish this, Matt and Anthony problem solved to arrive at using the still capture functionality of the camera. Matt wrote the correct string to access the camera, and the program written by Anthony refreshes this image within the virtual world to create a JPEG stream by requesting a new image as soon as the previous is loaded.

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This morning Tom waited patiently in line for the iPad 2, hoping that somebody ahead of him would give up their spot. He was ultimately successful, and when he mentioned to the sales clerk that it was to be used in a project for Give Kids The World, she was so impressed that she asked for a business card to pass along to management (perhaps we’ve won over another sponsor?). The release of the new iPad couldn’t come at a better time: it’s significantly lighter than the original and the sensitivity afforded by the gyroscope is a huge step up from that of the accelerometer. All in all, it will allow for a more comfortable, intuitive and smooth guest experience.

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