Years ago, I had this idea for a virtual fish tank. It would have five LCD displays (possibly touch screen) and a 3D rendering of fish inside. Each face of the cube would display the corresponding camera angle. For years that idea sat in a notebook, because I had no idea how to actually do it, and was making it way harder than it had to be. (I really have no idea how to do anything more complex than a cube in OpenGL.)
Well, it turns out someone at the University of British Columbia had the same idea, and built pCubee, a perspective corrected display box.
At least it was hard to do.
Fuck the iPad. I want this.
Video after the jump.
Oh, thats friggin rad.p.s. Getting the cube to correctly display is usually the hardest part. The rest is just math, tinkering and common sense.
How cool! It makes me think of this — http://actuality-medical.com/site/content/gallery.html# — and wonder if the cube could do all that stuff too.
In related news…
Hmm, seems kind of 1984-like, no? But I'd go for it if they displayed webcams–something live. (I do like, in the video, how they hold up that baby almost like a muppet.)