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Most of us still try to eke enough bandwidth out of our PCs so that movies and animations don't look like paper flip books. But here comes the next step: 3-D images. A team of researchers has developed a way to compress detailed geometrical data so that it can be transmitted on the Internet and viewed and manipulated on personal computers, just as images are now.
"Geometry is poised to become the fourth wave of digital-multimedia communication," says Wim Sweldens of Bell Labs' Mathematical Sciences Research Center. "The first three waves were sound in the 1970s, images in the '80s, and video in the '90s."
Sweldens and his colleague, Peter Schroder of the California Institute of Technology's computer science department, reported at SIGGRAPH 2000, a major technical conference on computer graphics and multimedia recently held in New Orleans, that they have developed a new mathematical algorithm for what is known as "digital-geometry compression." It can reduce enormous amounts of data 12 times more efficiently than the MPEG4 standard that's now used to send photos and other images over the Internet. Beyond sending your 3-D picture to mom, the development may also have an impact in fields as diverse as manufacturing, entertainment, medicine, education, and retail sales.
KEY TOOL. Geometric data has been a difficult problem to crack for computer scientists. Typically it's acquired by scanning all surfaces of an object -- anything from a person to aircraft parts -- with a laser. The information is saved as "meshes" of millions -- or even billions -- of triangles.
The challenge: using the fewest possible number of bits to store and transmit the image, then expand it into a precisely accurate representation of the original. To accomplish that feat, the team turned to a mathematical concept developed in the 1980s, called wavelet transformation, that offers advantages over the method used to compress images. "The kind of signal processing used before simply cannot handle geometry," says Sweldens. "Wavelets can."
First to surf the new wave are expected to be producers of animated films and video games. "Imagine a multiplayer, Internet-based video game that looks as good as Toy Story," says CalTech's Schroder, who is on leave from Bell Labs. But manufacturers won't be far behind. The new technology will allow them to create virtual catalogs of parts and, when changes are made, use the scans to guide fabrication equipment. Compressed geometry is likely to become a key tool from design through production to sales and order fulfillment.
VIRTUAL FIT. What about the rest of us? "Think of real estate," says Sweldens. Today, someone selling a house puts pictures of all the rooms on the Web. "When geometry processing reaches the desktop, you'll not only be able to see any view of any room in the house but you'll also be able to see how it will look after you knock out a wall, repaint the rooms, and drop in new furniture," he adds.
Or maybe you just want some new threads? Your haberdasher will scan your body -- and keep it confidential, we hope -- then transmit the information to a factory. Your custom-made duds could then be delivered the next day. Sound far-fetched? It's the 21st century, and in a few years, 3-D could well be the fourth wave of digital communications.
Copyright 2000, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
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