Behold! Real time virtualisation!

So I found a pretty neat gadget while surfing the web a few days ago, and it just now occured to me that this nifty little thing relates exactly to what we are talking about in our class about virtual worlds. I am not exactly sure what this product is called, but under this link http://englishrussia.com/?p=1377#more-1377

They call it Matrix Goggles. If you watch the video it will show you what it would look like to wear these goggles. Remember the Predator's vision, or Neo looking into the Matrix? Now you can do that too in real time with these goggles.

I've seen this done before and its actually quite simple. All this is doing is adding color filters over video. I used to do this stuff all the time with an old Handycam and some basic video editing software, but that was accomplished via post editing. I'm guessing that the goggles have a small camera on them, which takes in everything you would normally see, then it runs through the small computer adding the specified filter, and then relays that image onto the screen inside the goggles.

I was thinking for a minute that this product is worthless, it acutally doesn't "do" anything except alter your perception of the outside world. But then I began to think, what if you could set the filters to point out skin tones? If this could be accomplished, Soldiers could use this technology on the Battlefield and it could mean the difference between winning and losing a war.

The military already uses Thermal vision on vehicals, but what if we integrated this for every individual soldier to use? Essentially we would be fighting a real war inside, and outside of a virtual world at the same time. It sounds crazy, but you would be looking at the real world through a virtual world, and all of your actions follow out to the real world. Exciting isn't it?