James May 'hologram' raves about old tech at Science Museum Top Gear presenter James May has been transformed into a floating chatterbox spectre that hovers next to exhibits in the London Science Museum. In a new app hyped as "the first augmented-reality application to fuse a TV personality with museum exhibits", the curly-haired petrolhead is superimposed on a phone's camera display …
Not only that... A prism splits light into its component parts, and although it would look very pretty, a lighthouse beaming a rainbow across the sea wouldn't be very helpful.
It's simply a different kind of lens, called a Fresnel lens. In essence it is a standard lens cut into concentric circles with the "dead" block of square glass with parallel sides removed from the middle. This leaves just the inner and outer curves, which are the parts which provide the light bending effect for a lens.
Whenever light is refracted the light is split into its component parts to a greater or lesser degree, it is just that a prism refracts it two times and each time to an extreme degree.
All simple lenses split the light into its components and it is a PITA if you try to build an inexpensive telescope/camera as it leads to chromatic aberration, expensive compund lenses are used to try and remove the aberration.
why couldn't you have included a close up photo of the marker in the review? I tried in vain to get the app to pick up the marker from the photos included, they're too out of focus.
(yes, I know I could get the QR codes from the SciMu website, but that's no where near as fun on a friday afternoon as getting it from a picture on an unrelated website is it?)
re: AR app - i'm a bit disapointed to find that it's just Mr May talking to you. I was hoping the AR in this app would be more involved with the exhibts. For example, the bisected Mini - in an AR app they could show the missing pieces of the Mini and peal them off as they get described. For other exhibits, the AR could impose authentic backgrounds around the items so you can see them in their surroundings. For the Natural History, AR apps could be used to put flesh and skin on top of the dinosaur bones...
I might go, its just a massive shame that James May is nothing but an annoying dumb tit trumped out for nearly everything vaguley 'sciencey' on the BBC.
Just why is El-Reg covering this nobody who the BBC made a somebody, landing a gig as an unoriginal piece of AR gimmickyness at a museum?
<<<<<<Can't find the TIT icon.
I was counting how many posts it would take before someone had a pop at James May. He may not be your cup 'o' tea but he has got a way of talking about things as though he does actually know what he is talking about, in a non condescending way to lesser mortals
Its because of this that the BBC have used him in many programs as it appears the public do like him and his manner of explanation. The BBC would not have shoved him in front of the camera every time if nobody liked him.
now as you appear to be a know it all and don’t need the science dumbing down in the fun sort of way that May is good at, then why you think you need to comment on something that is clearly of no interest to you is beyond me !
"<<<<<<Can't find the TIT icon."............... try looking in a mirror...
What's so wrong with James May? Sure he's no genius but he does appear to have some idea of what he's talking about when it comes to engineering. That's more than can be said for most of the BBC's technology correspondents who just regurgitate press releases and uninformed opinion from twitter.
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