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Ooooh! Ooooh

I just got tickets for Avatar at the IMAX.  WooHoo!  I’ve been dying to see it in 3D, this is even better!

I love SciFi.  More than anything.  Genre-wise, anyway.

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How ‘Avatar’ May Predict the Future of Virtual Worlds
CNet (01/24/10) Terdiman, Daniel

The technology James Cameron and his team developed for the film “Avatar” may provide a sneak peek of the future direction that three-dimensional (3D) virtual worlds will take.

The movie’s breakthrough is a camera system that captures live footage of actors and instantly integrates them within virtual environments. Some experts speculate that it and other augmented reality tools will form a core technology for mainstream 3D virtual world interaction.

“It will get more sophisticated when whole worlds are mapped onto the sim-reality complete with avatars–other people–and bots,” predicts expert Bruce Damer.

Jerry Paffendorf, who helped organize the Accelerating Studies Foundation’s Metaverse Roadmap report, expects that the world will eventually be fully immersed within real-time graphical overlays. He says this virtual world evolution is in a nascent stage, incarnated in the prevalence of augmented reality applications “that let you look through the camera to see things that aren’t physically there: Either data overlays like directions or where tweets are coming from or a digital doggy prancing on your kitchen counter.”

“Avatar” producer Jon Landau says the virtual production technology invented for the film will eventually become a consumer technology. He envisions people using it to recor

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C  L  U  B  T  O  P  5
Custom roasted in the Texas Hill Country.
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December 15, 2009

NOTE FROM CHRIS:

Director James Cameron’s $300-million-budget scifi
CGI spectacular “Avatar” hits theaters this Friday.
So what has the dude behind “Terminator”
and “Titanic” cooked up for us this time?

The Top 14 Surprises in “Avatar”

14> Audiences haven’t been this spellbound by a blue-faced
exercise in celluloid self-gratification since David
Carradine’s homemade snuff film.

13> The movie ends after 30 minutes, when Arnold Schwarzenegger
returns as the Budget Terminator.

12> Due to a blown budget, credits are written in crayon on extra
wide notebook paper.

11> Since avatars are half-human/half-alien, Dick Cheney was
allowed to do a cameo as himself.

10> The leaves on the trees are actually $50 bills.

9> “Che’ri” the red alien and “Ke’li” the green alien look
suspiciously like strippers.

8> Squint just the right amount and you’ll swear there’s a plot.

7> Of the $300 million budget, one third went to erasing
Sigourney Weaver’s wrinkles using CGI.

6> The leader of the blue-skinned race is none other than
Courtney Love.

5> Fun fight scene where the blonde Marine tries to pry alien
Ti’ger out of his spaceship with a 9-iron.

4> Wilford Brimley’s surprise cameo as Gargamel.

3> The giant space portal thru which the Marines travel is
actually an extreme close-up of Julia Roberts’mouth.

2> A hollow, mind-numbing suckfest has never *looked* this
spectacular!

and Topfive.com’s Number 1 Surprise in “Avatar”…

1> Only IMAX theaters can show the film because regular screens
are too small to display James Cameron’s massive ego.

[ Copyright 2009 by Chris White/TopFive.com ]

The runners-up were just as good …