Hey Gang!
I was watching a downhill skiing event awile back, I'm not quite sure
why, and I saw a very neat trick on the replay. They showed two skiers
going down the hill together in real time, at their real relative
positions on the course, camera panning to follow the action, and they
were looking absolutely real with the background being crystal clear
with no signs of a "double exposure" trick. Not a cheap split screen
trick. If you didn't know better, you would swear that there were two
skiers on that hill...until they appeared to ski right through each
other.
The only way I can think that they did it was to hook a motion
controlled camera into the timer system. The shot was set up on a short
section about halfway down the hill, and it lasted about 10 seconds.
When the skier trips the timer, it starts a pre-defined waiting time,
set up during practice runs. When the pre-determined amount of time has
passed, the camera goes into a pre-programmed and highly precise motion
routine right when the skier appears in the shot, and it pans along the
run with the skier. Do this with each skier, and you have the ability
to superimpose one run onto another with precision relative to their
times, and you can watch them both take different lines.
Naturally, I immediately thought of all the cool applications for
autocross and ProSolo. Wouldn't it be amazing to have this kind of aid
in comparing your run to the fast guys? Wouldn't it also be a very cool
as a part of a televised event? No point to this, I was just impressed
enough that I wanted to share.
--
Patrick Washburn <washburn@dwave.net>
Wausau, WI Land of Cheese
95 DS Neon
Moooooooooo.
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