Using the railway network as a flatbed scanner [video]
27 points - today at 6:30 PM
SourceWhen I read the title I thought of another IDEA that I've had bumping around in my head that would be pretty cool.
Put down two model railroad straightaways next to each other, with two locomotives, use them as a base to attach a 3d-printer arm across and "print" a model railroad diorama, incrementally moving the locomotives to print each slice.
In other words, a flatbed 3d printer where one axis is the locomotives moving across your railroad layout. I think it could rejuvenate model railroads if you could print mountains, towns, streambeds, roads, etc...
Basically the inverse of https://daniel.lawrence.lu/photos/ or https://trains.jo-m.ch/ ;)
I've played with panorama mode and tried both of these (1 - panorama of moving train passing platform, 2 - panorama out window of a moving train)
...and both got the same weird artifacts, as it piled "similar" slices together then jumbled up "complex" slices.
Too bad they can't have a toggle for time-slice based panorama vs scene-based panorama. or maybe turn on accelerometer optimizations or not.
contr-error
today at 8:23 PM
The former is in the prior art section at 2:24!
I love this so much!
This is such a cool hack, just for the sake of it. Amazing hacking and amazing art!
In the preso, she has said the full size output is on the website-
can anyone see what that link is? I didn't find it on the video page, but I might've just missed it.
ted_dunning
today at 7:33 PM
It would have been pretty easy to use a horizontal line scanner to get image speed.
In any case, it seems that using a full frame video would be much easier to post process since frame to frame correlation tells you everything you need to know about motion.
One of the first scripts I vibecoded did exactly this. It works well, but is limited by framerate when there's high motion.
I'm not sure that video would have been easier to postprocess. At what fps and shutter speed?
lalalandland
today at 7:29 PM
Using the camera as a scanner has a long history in satellite cameras and other aerial photography
sciencesama
today at 7:34 PM
they need to connect with the skunkworks team, they solved this problem on sr 71 long time back !