CBS News coverage....

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Bro Jerry wrote:

> "Harry Smith was ducking and weaving in his own virtual reality
> setting, while statistics zoomed around him. The background looked like a
> swirling Martian windstorm."

CBS was using Silicon Graphics' "Virtual Set" hardware and software.

I don't know the specifics of what CBS was actually using, but these
are typically SGI Onyx R4K computers with huge amounts of RAM and huge
amounts of disk space and huge amounts of I/O and large numbers of
CPU's.  I've seen similar setups at SGI's HQ in Mountain View CA and it
is some Really Impressive Stuff.  It's all done in real time.

You know how the weatherman walks around and points at a map behind
him?  In reality, he's pointing at nothing but a blue screen.  A
computer superimposes the weathermap image onto anything that's blue in
the image.  Some movie SFX are done in a similar way using this
bluescreen technique.

So now, the *entire set* is painted blue, and computers render and
superimpose three-dimensional objects onto the set.  The actor is in
reality walking across a blue floor, but the image portrayed on the
television might show the actor walking through a detailed jungle
forest or perhaps some other invented environment.

Richard Masoner