back to article Nvidia's skirt-chasing chips ogle babes, eyeball Twitter and YouTube

Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang’s GPU Technology Conference 2013 keynote was a typical whirlwind slideshow of all the pies the graphics processor maker has its fingers in these days. These addresses are usually chock-full of demonstrations showing where we are in terms of state-of-the-art graphics, scientific and technical computing …

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  1. Don Jefe

    End User

    The Amazon app for iPad does this too. I haven't tried dresses but it did find my exact shower curtain (which has a pleasing fish pattern).

    It's kind of neat in a Star Trek sort of way but I just can't see much of a need for it on the consumer level.

    I could see the Nvidia idea applied to satellite images though if pattern recognition is really its thing. For example maybe it could identify all the Walnut trees in a satellite image or be able to tell sheep and cows apart in a sat image. Just don't see the average Joe snapping away at pretty girls to identify her shoes & all those magazines used in the example tell you exactly what the model is wearing and where to buy it anyway. Maybe the fashion mag was not a good exam

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Re: End User

      >Just don't see the average Joe snapping away at pretty girls to identify her shoes

      Average Joe maybe not, Average Jolene possibly... though Jolene might just ask the pretty girl where she got those gorgeous shoes. As a demo of the tech though, clothes might interest more people than agricultural or military applications.

      In another Reg article today, some pervert in a pet shop was caught trying to use an iPad app to identify what brand of knickers an attractive female shopper was wearing.

  2. Mage Silver badge
    Holmes

    Nothing to do with chips.

    Is purely software really technology?

    Also anything with a stored picture and the application and Internet can do this. No doubt a GPU can run the algorithm faster than a general purpose CPU.

    1. Donald Becker
      Boffin

      Re: Nothing to do with chips.

      Calling it "pure software" is misunderstanding the point.

      It's only fast and energy efficient enough to use because the software is written to run on the GPU.

      While part of the value is the details of how the image is classified, the point of the demo -- and the reason for showcasing it at GTC -- is that by structuring it to take advantage of the GPU, it's now computationally feasible. You can do the image classification and matching before the skirt goes out of style or your phone runs out of battery.

      This is much like High Dynamic Range photography. The basic idea is simple. Take a picture, analyze it for brightness levels, use that info to take one or two additional pictures to fill in bright or dark areas. But behind the simple idea is a huge amount of computation. Making it worse is that because the first stage is so hard, the second picture won't line up with the first. So now you have to do image registration, which is even more work. But you still end up with crap, because any motion or changes in the scene causes disturbing artifacts.

      By being very clever with the GPU on the Tegra, including configuring the hardware to put GPU compute into the camera image pipeline, NVIDIA can now do HDR in real time. Not only can HDR now be used for video (jaw-dropping amazing!), by being fast it avoids almost all of the disturbing artifacts from the slow approach.

      Sometimes speed and efficiency makes all the difference.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Nothing to do with chips.

        Well, one way to do HDR video is to cheat, and use a partially silvered mirror, and two DSLRs, at two different exposures. The captured footage is then processed as you describe. The video of a welding arc - adjusted so that everything is visible, before and during the weld - is incredible. Like very high speed video, it has industrial applications as well as artistic ones.

        I'm not quite sure how you can HDR video in real time with just one camera unless it itself is modified to over- and under- expose alternate frames.

        For still images, it is just a case of exposure bracketing- though of course you don't want the camera to move. Though much abused for artistic effects, the resulting .HDR file can be used in 3D rendering to both illuminate a virtual object, and to provide reflections on it - allowing it to be placed convincingly into a real scene. A special lens (or a large mirrored sphere and some trickery to remove the camera's own reflection) is required to capture a 360 panorama though. More recent versions of Photoshop can handle .HDR files, but instead of The Gimp penguins have to use a Gimp fork called CinePaint.

        /end off topic

        1. Kevin Pollock

          Re: Nothing to do with chips.

          Re: real time HDR video.

          I'm not a camera engineer, so this is just my guessing, but if you have a triple CCD video camera (which used to be expensive, but is a feature that's now available on high end consumer cameras), why can't you set each CCD to a different exposue value and capture the HDR info that way? No need for half-silvered mirrors and such.

          I know that the three different CCDs were actually designed to capture the different primary colors, but with the flick of a firmware switch couldn't they operate in an HDR capture mode?

  3. Gio Ciampa

    Did Sheldon finally finish Project Shoe for Penny?

    http://bigbangtheory.wikia.com/wiki/The_Bus_Pants_Utilization

  4. John G Imrie

    Don't careabout dresses

    What I want to know is, if I take a photo of a cute but attached lady, will it find me a smiler looking but unattached one?

    1. theblackhand
      Devil

      Re: Don't careabout dresses

      It goes one step further - it finds the lady, checks she is single and displays your photo to see if she's interested.

      For some reason it seems to always produce no results so nVidia went back to just matching dresses....

      1. Steven Roper
        Coat

        Re: Don't careabout dresses

        Maybe it produces no results because there's a worldwide shortage of unattached women who look like Jessica Alba...?

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A new upskirt defense?

    I was just trying to photo match her knickers so I can buy them for my wife, your honour!!!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: A new upskirt defense?

      From today's Economist:

      "And stretch...

      Lululemon, a maker of fabulously pricey yoga wear, issued a recall for its women’s black Luon bottoms because of a high “level of sheerness” that was too revealing. It warned there would be a shortage of the pants in its stores, presumably because men were rushing out to buy them for their wives and girlfriends."

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