Demo Spring 2011: And the Oscar Goes To...

Demo Spring 2011 kicked off at 5:30 pm Pacific Time on Sunday, 27 February, the same time as the Academy Awards telecast. So it’s not surprising that I had the Oscars on my mind as I watched the presentations at Demo Spring, a showcase for new technology that ran through Tuesday in Palm Desert, Calif. Or that I was inspired to name a few award winners of my own.

And the DemOscar goes to:

Special Effects: Swivel from FaceCake

Are shoppers more likely to buy clothes online—or in a store—if they can try them on virtually? Two companies introducing technologies at Demo Spring say they are—FaceCake Marketing Technologies and Zugara. Both let shoppers use gestures (captured by webcam or Kinect) to grab virtual clothes off of a rack and try them on; Swivel’s version, in my testing, was a lot more responsive and realistic than Zugara’s. Do they make sense? Neither gives you a clue as to how the item might fit, and fit is usually my biggest problem in virtual shopping; they do let you play with accessories, and perhaps there is something to be said for seeing a style pasted on your image, even if the pasting can be a little clumsy—the “Oh my, that’s definitely not for me” reaction comes a lot faster than it does when paging through images of models. I test the Swivel system in the video above.

Achievement in Sci-Fi: Cyclic Variations in Altitude Conditioning (CVAC) Systems
The CVAC system, a futuristic personal pod, takes a single user up to a simulated 20,000 feet or so in altitude and back down to the ground in a matter of minutes.