Not Quite A Touch Screen To Let You Feel Fabrics Online
from the touch-this dept
One of the problems some people have with buying clothing online is that they can't "feel" the fabric. They can't pick it up, move it around, and see how well it's really made. A student in the UK has designed some software to try to solve this problem, letting users "feel" clothing online. The software tries to make it easier to sense "softness, fullness, smoothness, hairiness, prickliness, drape, thickness, elasticity, rigidity and warmth" of the fabric using some 3D animations. For example, to see "hairiness" it would show a close up, and as the user moved the mouse, you could see how the fibers moved. Of course, if they combined this with a bit of haptics to give some touch feedback, it might seem a lot more useful. Realistically, this is just a bunch of video demonstrations about the fabric.
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This reminds me of the old vision tests they would give to kids, where the kid would wear diffraction glasses and then look at a stereo diagram of a huge insect. The kid is instructed to "pet" the insect's delicate wings, which *should* appear above the surface of the diagram.
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