Emm used her iPhone 12 Pro + @Scenario3d iphone app to generate this 3D image of her daughter.
Scenario makes a number of products. Read more about Scenario3d here.
LumiLabs also has some of their own offerings to capture scenes.
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Back in 2016, I wrote about how a grad student created a fighter pilot AI that was able to defeat a retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Gene “Geno” Lee. It was so good that it didn’t do it just once. It shot him down every time.
Fast forward just 8 years and now there is the real thing.
The US military has tested an AI-controlled F16 named X-62A in a dogfight with an actual test pilot. The Variable Stability In-flight Simulator Test Aircraft, or “VISTA” for short, is essentially a modified F16 fighter jet controlled by AI that has previously conducted multiple test flights to demonstrate the capabilities of its artificial pilot (via The Telegraph).
In a press release, the USAF Test Pilot School and DARPA revealed that they initially tested various defensive maneuvers with the AI controlled jet to establish initial in-flight safety, before engaging in air-to-air simulated combat with another F16 in the skies above Edwards air force base in California last year.
It’s not clear if the tested dogfights were limited purely to aerial combat maneuvers with simulated weapons fire or how it did against live pilots. However, a previous AI developed by Heron Systems as part of a DARPA tournament was able to defeat a human pilot in five out of five tested scenarios.
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It’s official. Farrell McGuire has found the actual location of the famous Backrooms photo. Technically he re-discovered it had been discovered in 2019, but nobody noticed.
For almost 20 years people have tried to figure out the location of this mysterious photo that spawned an entire genre of creepy pasta writings, videos, and games. It’s location has been investigated for years – but the location was elusive because there’s is almost no history of the photo online and so few clues. Image searches and examing for EXIF data came up blank.
McGuire did a lot of investigation into the image. He tried everything from low level digital file and image forensics to reverse image searches. He noted the photo appeared to be unedited copy straight from an old Sony Cybershot digital camera. The outlets on the walls appeared to place its origin in North America. The biggest addition is an observation about the strange walls – including some that don’t go all the way to the ceiling. He said it reminded him of older furniture store show floors. Searches, however, lead to too many dead ends and it was uncertain how to narrow things down more. There’s been a lot of furniture stores over the years.
Only a few weeks after his original video, a breakthrough was discovered. It turns out someone HAD found the original image. Way back May 29th, 2019 a Twitter user (@rkfg_me) posted that he found it. But nobody noticed.
The original image link is dead, but the Internet Wayback machine had a copy of the Hobbytown website. Here’s the original image: https://web.archive.org/web/20040702085556/https://hobbytownoshkosh.com/Dsc00161.jpg
And the domain name gives the location away. It’s location is the HobbyTown in Oshkosh Wisconsin (807 Oregon St, Oshkosh, WI 54902). It’s also connected to a shop called Fabulous Finds next door that shared some of the original space.
The picture was part of a series of pictures from when Hobbytown employees were renovating the building from it’s previous owner in 2004: Rohner’s Furniture store. The store was purchased by Hobbytown and the photo was from the empty upstairs showroom when they converted it into a RC racetrack. Conversations people have had with the shop owner seem to confirm the renovation and story.
Here’s the rest of the photos from that website:
Amazing.
Previous investigation video with many of the twists and turns he took while investigating the photo:
Other interesting links:
Video walkthrough of the current Hobbytown space so you don’t have to go visit.
nVidia released software that turns 2D photos Into 3D scenes using a AI augmented, CUDA powered NeRF generator (neural radiance fields).
Learn more about Instant NeRFs: https://nvda.ws/3AU5wgA
Tutorial on how to make a 3D render from 2D photos: https://nvda.ws/3ciMLJI
Find the code on GitHub: https://github.com/NVlabs/instant-ngp
More Instant NeRF creators: https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2022/08...
Everyone is down in PC sales (except Huawie), but Dell took a particularly bad beating this year.
| Vendor (company) | 2023 shipments | 2023 market share | 2022 shipments | 2022 market share | Annual growth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lenovo | 15,536 | 38.00% | 19,253 | 39.00% | -19.00% |
| HP | 4,309 | 10.00% | 4,380 | 9.00% | -2.00% |
| Huawei | 3,986 | 10.00% | 3,576 | 7.00% | 11.00% |
| Dell | 3,148 | 8.00% | 5,644 | 11.00% | -44.00% |
| Asus | 2,863 | 7.00% | 3,770 | 8.00% | -24.00% |
| Others | 11,399 | 28.00% | 12,876 | 26.00% | -11.00% |
| Total | 41,240 | 100.00% | 49,499 | 100.00% | -17.00% |
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AI video platform LTX Studio is now open for users to get stuck in and make short films, storyboards and other generative productions all from a simple text prompt. Simply type the film idea or a full synopsis of your desired creation and then set the visual aesthetic, aspect ratio, inspiration and your virtual casting for a selection of AI generated characters.
It utilizes dozens of AI models to generate the script, add voice narration, background music, sound effects, and generate the image and video elements.
Other AI video tools create more realistic video, speech tools with more realistic speech and lip sync available in both Pika Labs and Runway — but for each of those you still have to make a series of short clips and they have poor character consistency.
It has a lot of limitations; but it absolutely could be used for previsualization and concept pieces.
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It’s a long-running joke that Portland anarchists have become extremely bold since the BLM riots curtailed most arrests and lack of any prosecutions. Locals on forums report they’re now increasingly advertising their attacks by putting fliers around – even in places with children like this one found in the Sellwood library.
Too bad that actual black lives do not matter to these same folk when they attacked and caused a possible heart attack to a much beloved black PSU campus security officer Willie Halliburton. They then blocked medical crews as soon as they arrived to help him during an apparent heart attack caused by the confrontation. A shining example of what many locals already know – that anarchists love to take over protests to spread destruction and violence. They could care less about actual black lives.
Sadly it’s just another 2024 weekday in Portland’s streets.
Dune 2 cinematographer Greig Fraser talks about using Unreal Engine to visualize the shots he wanted in the movie. It’s part of a trend of using Unreal as a previsualization and rendering engine for a variety of high quality, high budget movie productions.
There were some pretty big storms near Greenfield Iowa and these guys got some amazing footage of an absolute monster of a tornado. This thing had multiple rotating vortices, took out multiple wind turbines, and you can see just how far it sucks air around it in the drone shots.
Here’s a video from the guys in the car chasing it
Sora is an artificial intelligence video generator that is capable of producing multi-shot clips of a minute or longer from nothing more than a text prompt — but so far only a select few have used it to create content. OpenAI is working on security issues and slowly rolling it out this year.
One of the artists given early access to Sora is August Kamp, a musician, researcher and creative activist. She described Sora as representing a “turning point” for artists as it means the only limitation on visuals is the human imagination.
“Taking these pictures that I’ve held onto [in my mind] for two years and saying ‘August – we can share these with folks’. that’s what I think is special about this tool,” she said.
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