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Elon Musk took the futuristic gesture interface from Iron Man and made it real

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Re: Elon Musk took the futuristic gesture interface from Iron Man and made it real

#31
post #29
post #17

Seems clear he is doing this to increase his personal brand as the "real life tony stark" as opposed to it actually being useful for engineering. His personal brand is an enormous asset on the balance sheet of his companies, so I really respect this - but lets call it what it is.

Of course this will be useful for engineering. Maybe not in it's current state but in future, better versions. He and his team are trying out some really cool ideas. While most of us work on apps that involve displaying text and pictures, this guy has the good fortune to be able to play with rockets and cars etc. Good for the World that not everybody is working on another app.

>Good for the World that not everybody is working on another app.

Couldn't agree more with that.

I'm just explaining the reason you are seeing this is primarily for PR purposes -- which is a huge part of his job. HN should be able to tell the difference between good PR and good tech.

Re: Elon Musk took the futuristic gesture interface from Iron Man and made it real

#32

I'll have to go against the grain here, but this isn't anything special. The Leap has been around for a good while, the Occulus Rift has been around for a good while, and 3D Laser Sintering has been around for a while, along with every other technology they're using for this application. Also, I believe they're the wrong people to use it. Making the feedback involved visual instead of mathematical/geometrical has it'…

To me it's like Apple. They doesn't invent any ground-breaking technology. They just combine them; use them at the right time.

Re: Elon Musk took the futuristic gesture interface from Iron Man and made it real

#33

I'll have to go against the grain here, but this isn't anything special. The Leap has been around for a good while, the Occulus Rift has been around for a good while, and 3D Laser Sintering has been around for a while, along with every other technology they're using for this application. Also, I believe they're the wrong people to use it. Making the feedback involved visual instead of mathematical/geometrical has it'…

> they just went ahead and made it

Upon such things, many successes are based :)

Re: Elon Musk took the futuristic gesture interface from Iron Man and made it real

#34
post #30

> To top it all off, the team then printed the part in titanium using a 3D laser metal printer. If such a beast does exist I'd be even more amazed than the leapmotion controller. But I have a nagging feeling the author doesn't know what they are talking about. milling =/= printing Edit: Well then, I stand corrected. I wasn't even aware there were 3D metal printers available.

Laser sintering: http://www.eos.info/en

It is an additive 3d printing process based on atomic diffusion.

I believe I saw an advertisement (possibly for an eos model) where they 3d printed titanium parts for surgical replacement.

Re: Elon Musk took the futuristic gesture interface from Iron Man and made it real

#35
post #11

I was impressed about a minute into it and then he said "that's what we were able to do a few months ago" I was expecting he would pull the monitor away leaving a 3D holographic projection. I guess I watch too many movies, lol But the glass projection looked fascinating.

Glass projection has been around a long time and typically uses a foil fixed to the glass and a rear projection projector. If you want to experiment it is an off the shelf component from suppliers like prodisplay.com or glimmscreensinternational.com and used probably most widely for shop and theater designers.

Re: Elon Musk took the futuristic gesture interface from Iron Man and made it real

#36
post #17

Seems clear he is doing this to increase his personal brand as the "real life tony stark" as opposed to it actually being useful for engineering. His personal brand is an enormous asset on the balance sheet of his companies, so I really respect this - but lets call it what it is.

I also respect Elon, but call me when he has something like "Jarvis"[1] :)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQSLWQxzjiw

Re: Elon Musk took the futuristic gesture interface from Iron Man and made it real

#38
By using the Leap Motion SDK and something like Unity (a 3D Engine) this is really easy todo, well the zooming and rotating stuff atleast. Same goes for Oculus Rift integration.

However, seeing it all combined like this using a 3D printer in the end is really inspiring, it just sparks so many ideas in my head immediatly :)

Re: Elon Musk took the futuristic gesture interface from Iron Man and made it real

#39

We all know who Elon Musk is talking to. It's not us. It's the other billion people on youtube who will watch this and go, "this is the coolest thing I have ever seen".

This is definitely not geared toward techies. The closeup of the mouse and keyboard in the first few seconds is meant to make average people think "Oooh, this is high tech."

Re: Elon Musk took the futuristic gesture interface from Iron Man and made it real

#40

"Elon Musk Learns Leap Motion and builds a grabbing tool" should probably be the title. I don't get what the hype is all about. It looks as though as his team just created a program that can change the position and rotation of a virtual model in space. I know the community here on HN seems to worship Elon Musk, but that demo definitely was NOT making the Iron Man gesture interface real.

Did you even watch past the first 30 seconds of the video?
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