Mind Probe On-Air

USA Networks, Convergence Lab 1998

Project Description: I served as the Chief technical architect in the design and implementation of a simultaneous live television and web-based broadcast of a game-show format program utilizing telephony as a controller. I developed a real-time synthetic virtual studio that was controlled by various motion sensors attached to actors. I participated in the concept development and collaborated with 3D designers, actors, writers, and television producers to create this prototype.

This was a collaboration with Der Hong Yang, Matt Ledderman, Sharleen Smith, Jamie Biggar, Leo Villareal and Tracy White.

Technical Notes:  The main game control was written in Macromedia Director.  The face tracking was done using Danny Rozin's Xtra for Macromedia Director and custom headgear.  The DTMF decoding and call progress were done using pci cards.  The virtual world was done created and rendered in Cosmo as VRML.  The control of the VRML was done as a Java Applet.  All networking was done using TCP/IP socket connections.