How many people have dreamt about being Marty McFly and traveling across time? If you’re one of them, then you might be interested to know about the GigaPan Time Machine. ((GigaPan Time Machine)) Created by some guys from Carnegie Mellon University, the GigaPan Time Machine might not exactly be like the DeLorean, but it does make time traveling somewhat of a reality for you and me.
It is actually a computer system that allows users to view certain locations via videos or images. These images and videos are rendered in gigapixel-scale (hence the name?). The cool thing is that you can explore the images/videos by moving back (or forward) in time. At the same time, you can also zoom in and out.
To make that clearer, let’s say you are looking at a field of tulips somewhere in The Netherlands. You can choose to zoom in to have a clearer view of the beautiful flowers. More so, you can go back in time and watch the flowers start to form as buds and then slowly come into full bloom.
Interested in knowing how the system was created? Believe it or not, it has been made possible by HTML5! Based on HTML5, the researchers were able to develop “algorithms and software architecture that make it possible to shift seamlessly from one video portion to another as viewers zoom in and out of Time Machine imagery.”
I guess words can’t really explain how much fun this thing can be, so here’s a video to show you.
Not exactly as glamorous as speeding up a clunky old car and not exactly Back to the Future, but it’s still something!