Digitizing Reality

Three years ago I picked up my camera and scanned something into VR for the first time: a succulent. Back then I was just teaching myself photogrammetry. Today it's one of my strongest skills. 

I took the pictures from every angle I could think of -- up, down, left, right. Then I fed them into my computer and marveled at what came out: a beautiful model of my succulent started spinning on my screen. 

The resemblance was striking, even uncanny, but there were differences.

The real succulent was alive. It could grow if I watered it, or die if I forgot. The digital succulent was just an infinitely thin mesh of tiny triangles that ware painted with pixels from the photos I took. Any growing or dying behavior would have to be painstakingly coded into it.  

The real succulent pushed back when I touched it. The digital succulent let my virtual hand slip right through. 

The real succulent was itself. The digital succulent was just a model of it.

But we use the word "model" to describe a clay figurine as well as a catwalk model -- they're both archetypes of some true form. So perhaps the real succulent was also a model, insofar as it modeled for me when I scanned it. And perhaps digital succulent was also real -- a real digital succulent.

Maybe "real" is a less useful descriptor than "physical." Virtual reality is just an alternative set of things to look at and hear. It may be unbounded by conventional physics but it's no less real once you're in it.

So much has changed in those three years. The technology is actually all pretty much the same. But I've gotten faster and more accurate with my scans, and I've figured out what I want to use them for: to capture beautiful things before they're gone.