Kinect's Grandaddy Running On an Apple IIe In 1978

An anonymous reader writes "30 years before words like performance capture, augmented reality, or avatars were around — let alone commonplace — experimental film and video artist Tom DeWitt created a system that features aspects of all of them. Pantomation let users interact in real-time with a digital environment and props. It was built using Apple IIe's, analog video gear, and lots of custom hacking and patching. He's currently working on a holographic 3D system that's similarly ahead of its time."

Amiga -- circa 1985

[unil_1005]

I just can't resist boasting that I was selling a commercial product, "LIVE!", for the Amiga. A video input board, it was used at the Amiga launch.

Later a Canadian/Seattle company called VeryVivid wrote some very beautiful software for that board using the same principles as deWitt demonstrates. You could have birds fly to your hand, play virtual cymbals and drums, and may other effects.

If anybody can locate video of that, I'd love to see it again