At Nvidia’s GPU Technology Conference (GTC) this week, imagination rules and unlike most conferences that are awash with hardware, Nvidia’s is awash with imagination. This is a conference that is focused on creating, enhancing, and analyzing both the real and artificial and this year we are seeing the birth of a new hybrid.
It is about a concept that blends reality and artificial reality to create something different and I’m not talking about augmented reality although that does play here. I’m talking about a future where you may not be able to tell the difference between what is real and what isn’t. A kind of Unreality.
Making the Artificial Real
There is a belief that is floating around that suggests we don’t live in a real world. That theory suggests that our race will eventually want to model, very accurately, the past so they can study it and that the avatars living in that past would be so real to each other that they wouldn’t know they were artificial. The theory is that we already exist in that future and that our reality is a model. This seems incredibly far-fetched – until you see how close to reality we can now artificially create.
Artificial Worlds Drift Closer to Reality
Nvidia began by showing future rendered artificial worlds with high levels of detail and vast improvements in terms of how much time it would take a developer to create them. These worlds still looked like the inside of high end computer games, but they didn’t stop there. They went on to showcase how architects were using GPU computing to, almost in real time, create photorealistic views of room and buildings that only existed in the architects mind. This was very realistic and it was increasingly difficult to tell what was real and what wasn’t from the very high quality result. Even if you zoomed in, the detail was near flawless with reflections shadow density, and textures looking as if you were viewing an actual object.
Making the Real Artificial and the Artificial Real Again: 4D Photography
Nvidia showcased a new type of camera that could take a massive number of images at once using low cost optics and a special multi-faceted lens. The picture that was captured was relatively useless if seen in its native format, but after processing would render to perfect clarity and you could even change the focus on it as if you were still with the subject and taking new live pictures. The information captured and rendered was good enough for instant 3D conversion. In effect, you were taking what was an abstract of reality and making it real with the result being a clearer and better picture than you could have achieved with film. You could imagine this technology used on cameras for ATMs and surveillance that would be lower cost (because the quality of the optics isn’t as critical) but would provide higher quality images, because if you needed the detail post, processing would create it for you. I could easily picture this on an episode of CSI allowing the investigative team to capture the sharp image of a license plate or person in the background that a normal camera currently can’t.
Medical Modeling
Finally, Nvidia spoke about a technology that would allow you to model the inside of our own bodies and allow miniaturized virtualized doctors to move around inside that model without cutting you open to determine what the problems were. Using actual miniaturized tools, those little doctors were remotely controlled in real time and used a synchronized virtual image to correct the defect. This could allow physicians to identify tumors that currently can’t be identified and remove those that currently can’t be removed along with a vast host of other procedures that currently are beyond the capabilities of modern science. This, once again, blends the real with the artificial to create something that has the best aspects of both. A kind of Un-Reality.
Creating Unreality
What Nvidia is imagining at this year’s GTC with a number of partners isn’t showing reality or artificial reality, it is more line Unreality or a kind of an alternative reality that is indistinguishable from what is real. If achievable, this will allow us to imagine and create things that otherwise wouldn’t exist, to do things that otherwise are impossible, and to better turn our dreams into reality. It will enable us to better blend our imagination of what could be with what is to create in a much faster fashion. If we can visualize something, we can build it, and if the vision is strong enough, it becomes real.
We are seeing the birth of a future where the difference between reality and artificial reality are indistinguishable and the Unreality that results could be amazing.
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