Appreciated audience. Seeing the network traffic on my site, there is like about 7K monthly visits. They’re probably bot visits and hackers trying to crack my site as no one is reaching out to communicate to approve or disapprove of the content.
This will not lessen my spirit as I know why I’m writing all this (and it’s not the family history of Alzheimer’s (maybe it is a little bit)).
So the post below is actually from two years ago, so I might change the publish date so some time then, anyway…
So…. where new have I been after Kenya in December 2020? Well, lots of places, such as Bologna and Milano Italy, Los Angeles USA, Las Vegas and some time in La Verkin Utah.
Oh yeah, and Papua New Guinea and Saudi Arabia and Oman again, which was quite interesting. But let’s start with the first three. Some time in 2021. I came to a brilliant idea I might try to settle down a bit and go back to my programming roots and maybe spend more time at home and start working in more advanced technological field.
The company I signed up for is a (Croatian) equipment manufacturer of advanced professional camera tracking equipment for the purpose of receiving highly precise real-time information on where is the correct position of a studio camera in real space(or other real world things that need precise tracking in space). Later a rendering machine is combining this information, the video feed from the actual camera, and the CGI generated space to provide a VR environment and a final product.
They do work for some of the most famous TV houses in the world, like BBC, ESPN, FOX and South America, Asia, Europe of course… all over the world.
They manufacture their equipment and write the software from the ground up. This work took me to the first few locations in Italy and USA. The work was extremely interesting and I met some amazing and smart people, also got the chance to actually work in and around Hollywood and spend about a month working in Los Angeles.
We(4 of us) stayed at a rented apartment close to Reseda in the Valley, and cruised around West Hollywood from studio to studio installing and running the equipment.
Of course the work suited me like a glove as everything became immediately clear to me, regarding the calibration of equipment and camera lense’s distortions, the equipment used and the way it works. Some variants use mechanical encoders to track camera crane movements, others use fixed reflective markers and infrared lights and tracking cameras hooked up to a processor, which is actually a glorified Raspberry PI box, running a custom Linux software and a touchscreen hi res monitor to configure it all. More or less(not RaspberryPI, it’s a custom built mini PC).
In Bologna Italy we went to do a job for the presentation of the Ducati Aerodynamics system with the CEO of the company and their top Moto GP racer(forgot his name). Basically, installed several infra red cameras on the lights scaffold, and these cameras track one infra red light emitter that the host(the CEO) was waving around while he was talking. In the AR world, position of this emitter was the source of the virtual smoke that was flowing over the racer and the motorcycle. At the same time a camera position device was tracking the camera. Don’t want to go into too much detail. This is too much anyway, HA!
In L.A. you can bet I used any spare time to go around and visit everything I could in that short time. Also tried surfing a few times. Visited Universal Studios, Santa Monica pier, the sign, surfing in Malibu and Huntington beach(I suck). Walking the Hollywood blvd. There was a surprising number of homeless people in the side streets.
While working around West Hollywood, one job stood out as I worked in a 20 million dollar house that had a cinema/studio inside. They were shooting a music video so had to install a huge green screen and all the tracking stuff. The house was out of this (my) world.
After that went for a job in La Verkin Utah where the Red Bull Rampage race was held. Flew from L.A. to Las Vegas and then travel by car through the tip of Arizona to Utah.
For someone that has seen the mountains of Utah only on TV, the sight was breathtaking. So happy I got that experience, I can only share photos with you. Seeing it in person is a completely different experience.
There I installed the mechanical tracking on the camera crane which supplied the camera position to the content creator which was a company from Las Vegas. Creative Technology.
So… even though the job was a very good fit for me, and I met a lot of interesting people, content creators, VR designers, learned to do some work in Unreal Engine and QT, QML, I had to step back and get back to the oil field. The reasons for it were exclusively financial and family related. I’m bound to my kids, and have to know that the time I stay unavailable to them is worthwhile in the end.
Should I make a new post for the continuation of the story? I probably should. Seems like a good place to stop. Photos are in the album below.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/ebLZr8aydB8Pv8UVA
