I haven't watched it yet, but I was reading about the technology used in They Shall Not Grow Old, Peter Jackson's restoration and modernization of World War I film footage. Among other things, a computer was used to digitally create interstitial frames in the film, to increase the framerate to what we're accustomed to. The old, hand-cranked cameras filmed at 13 or 15 fps, so you get that weird, old-fashioned, herky-jerky quality, like in a Charlie Chaplin movie. Baseball fans might have seen old footage of Babe Ruth speeding around the bases. (Ironically, when you play a film that was recorded at a low framerate, everybody appears to be going oddly fast - increasing the fps smooths everything out and slows it down, so it looks more natural.)
Anyway, I haven't seen the film yet, but that's not really why I'm here. I'm thinking about whether and how this technology, in another 10-20 years, could be used in something I've long fantasized about: VR for watching live sporting events. Essentially, I'm imagining a VR viewing experience of a live, pro sports event that the viewer can watch, not just from field-level, not even from the sidelines, but from on the field (on the court, in the ring, on the track, wherever). I'm envisioning a dizzying array of hundreds - no, screw it, thousands - of tiny, super-HD cameras, not just ringing the field, but on the players' helmets and uniforms, on the referees. Heck, on the ball. Then a powerful computer would assemble the images into a smooth, real-time view that the viewer could steer around at will.
This is something I've fantasized about for years, maybe decades, basically since I started watching sports and reading and watching sci-fi. Imagine using the holodeck aboard the USS Enterprise to watch the Champions League final, the Superbowl, or a title fight. You wouldn't put yourself in a seat, 300' away and just admire the image quality, would you? You wouldn't even stand on the sidelines, with the coaches. You'd run alongside the players, then fling yourself up into the air for an overhead view, maybe follow the ball like the speeding "bullet cam" in a Sam Raimi movie.
Pure fantasy, obviously.
But then recently I starting seeing CGI technology in movies that not only knocked my socks off, it improved in leaps and bounds right in front of my eyes. The last two weeks I rewatched Tron: Legacy and the "de-aging" technology that was used in that movie is visibly worse, to the untrained eye, than the same technology used in Captain Marvel 8-10 years later.
So then I was thinking about They Shall Not Grow Old, which used CGI to interpret the existing Frames A, C and E and... what... I dunno... somehow calculate or conceive Frames B and D in between, and thinking about what that technology, generations from now (tech generations, not human generations) could be used for, and then I was reminded of my old "live sports in VR" fantasy and the dots all connected.
Yep, lotta time on my hands.
. That's a LOT, the longest forum I have ever been in.
hope you’re well.
