All posts by Sterling Ely

http://www.sterlingely.com

About Building Virtual Worlds

Building Virtual Worlds is the class at Carnegie Mellon started by the late great Randy Pausch that brings people from all majors together to create immersive virtual reality worlds.
Students are either modelers, painters, scripters, or “intangibles” and are arranged in groups of 4 for 2 weeks during which they create their 3D worlds. They are then regrouped to do it again 4 more times during the semester.

I’ve taken this class twice because, despite the gargantuan workload, it is an incredibly fun class, and a great experience working with others to create great things. In 2001, I was a modeler, meaning I created all the 3D objects that make up the virtual worlds, and in 2002, I was a painter, which means I created all the colors and textures that bring detail to those objects. I also did some animation, and created most of the start screens for the worlds I worked on.

 

 

Google Earth just keeps getting cooler

I’ve been in love with Google Earth since long before Google bought Keyhole, but they just keep making it better and better. In addition to lots of other neat upgrades that I’ll not mention, you can now explore SPACE and fly right into panoramic photos. Getting lost zipping around the solar system and exploring distant stars is frikkin sweet, ya should check it out.

Continue reading Google Earth just keeps getting cooler

Daft Punk: Alive 2007 concert in Keyspan Park, NY

Best. Show. Ever.

Going into this, I heard a lot of hype. I heard that people who weren’t even Daft Punk fans (yet somehow went?) described it as a “religious experience”. Personally, I’d not call anything short of playing shuffleboard with Jesus a religious experience… but I certainly get where those folks were coming from.

Awesome show… certainly the best I’ve been to. (though if I could have somehow attended the Pink Floyd: The Wall tour, then this would possibly fall second)

Anyway, here are some clips that I managed to shoot in between frantic dancing and screaming. Enjoy.

PS: the video above, while reasonably good for web streaming, is half the quality of what it really should be.
(plus, this is just more fun to watch on your TV or iPod)

Right click here and choose “save as” to download a high-resolution (& iPod / iTunes / iTV / iPhone friendly) version

MS takes the interactive table (closer) to primetime

First Apple busts out consumer multitouch with the iPhone, then Microsoft shows up with Surface, a (almost) consumer multitouch table. Very cool. I love the table I made, but it definitely has it’s shortcomings: I’ll be nice to see what a real software/electronics company can come up with, and it looks like that’s exactly what we’ll see in the coming years.

MS Surface official site
Popular Mechanics article
(featuring video & Jeff Han)
CNN article
(with video)
CNET article (with video)
Forbes article

New York Times article