'Time machine' allows visual exploration of space and time

http://www.kurzweilai.net/time-machi...m_medium=email

'Time machine' allows visual exploration of space and time
April 25, 2011 by Editor

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute have
leveraged the latest browser technology to create GigaPan Time Machine.

The system enables viewers to explore gigapixel-scale, high-resolution
videos and image sequences by panning or zooming in and out of the images
while simultaneously moving back and forth through time.

Viewers, for instance, can use the system to watch some plants move wildly
as they grow while others get eaten by caterpillars, or view a computer
simulation of the early universe as gravity works across 600 million
light-years to condense matter into filaments and finally into stars that
can be seen by zooming in for a closeup.

The system is an extension of the GigaPan technology developed by the CREATE
Lab and NASA, which can capture a mosaic of thousands of digital pictures
and stitch those frames into a panorama that be interactively explored via
computer. To extend GigaPan into the time dimension, image mosaics are
repeatedly captured at set intervals, and then stitched across both space
and time to create a video in which each frame can be hundreds of millions,
or even billions of pixels.

Using HTML5, CREATE Lab computer scientists have developed algorithms and
software architecture that make it possible to shift seamlessly from one
video portion to another as viewers zoom in and out of Time Machine imagery.
To keep bandwidth manageable, the GigaPan site streams only those video
fragments that pertain to the segment and/or time frame being viewed.

Google Inc. supported development of GigaPan Time Machine.