This video looks way cool. It’s the presentation demo of a company called Total Immersion where they are touting their ‘augmented reality’ technology. It allows them to merge animation and objects with real-time video. I watched this demo and immediately started shuttering at the idea that Fox Sports would butcher this technology in football games. Its bad enough that they have all these strange animations and sound effects during the game, but can you imagine giving John Madden the ability to , I dunno, put costumes on players in real time? This is a far cry from just superimposing those yellow “first down” markers on the playing field.

This does, however, raise some interesting ideas. How about product placement in movies AFTER the movie has been made? What about the security issues involved? You could super-impose a gun on someone in a bank real time to frame them. OK, maybe I’ve been watching too much Sci-Fi channel lately. Anyway, this brings up very interesting possibilities that far excede those we ever imagined the first time cartoons were merged with reality in Roger Rabit.