Got thinking about this based on a idea from another thread. How helpful do you think VR will be in the future of numismatics? Would it be a good to learn from grading a blown up coin that is much much bigger than the original? Or how would it help people learn how to VAM with being able to see a blown up image @Cascade, @messydesk? Sent from my A463BG using Tapatalk
Why do you need VR to learn about grading when you can just look at a big picture of the coin on a screen? Sounds like you think that people learning from big pictures will help people learn grading, not Vr. I don't think VR is really the future of anything. At least not in the next 5 years. It's a fad in it's current state. Like 3D printing was.
I dunno. Haven't really experienced today's VR. I can say though that the most important step to learning about vamming is the desire to do so. A blown up image makes micro vamming easier I guess or maybe a better feel for the whole coin and context but nothing beats a 10x loupe and a coin in hand. Anything that needs more magnification than that usually isn't worth the effort anyway aside academic efforts
While I love VR, I go in at least weekly. I absolutely love it. I think more and more things will be going this way. I watched the Olympics this year in VR and it was awesome to be right there watching everything, the crowd, the events, really like you were sitting in a seat there but without all the crowds and cost. I know the NFL and NBA are broadcasting games in VR this year as well. I have attended concerts and to be right on stage with the band. These kinds of things are great. I love exploring museums and viewing different things like that as well. I oddly thought it would be so over run by games, but I spend 3-4 hours a week in VR and have yet to play a single game. Not that I don't like games, there is just so much more to do. Netflix, face it, the only way to watch movies now in VR. I have no idea how many times while watching a movie on the simulated movie theater I have actually lifted my legs up to put them on the coffee table there in front of you. It could be beneficial it could not depends on how it is used. I don't really see grading being useful. You first have completely scan in a coin in 3d. Much faster to just look at it or use a microscope. However learning how different coins are produced. Being able to explore the mint and watch them produce coins, seeing how they are handled. Perhaps even viewing how Ancient coins were produced. Kind of solves the security aspect of letting people right on the floor. The Tesla factory has a complete Virtual tour as well. You can go there and go through the entire production of a car at your leisure. You can watch any aspect of product process as you are right there on the floor and focus in on what you want. This would kind of be cool to see the mint do this. Blowing up designs, being able to really see die variety from a giant coin, could be pretty useful maybe for learning, but again evaluating and grading. Not really useful. Maybe watching graders work and seeing exactly how they ware working by putting you right in the environment or in the eyes of the grader. VR while I think is really an entertainment future especially as the resolution gets better and they solve things like the heavy glasses. There are still things that are going to be much simpler and easier to do manually. Like actually grade a coin.
Two different answers, depending on whether we're talking grading or attribution. Neither lend themselves to VR, without the development of yet another skillset. Grading: Large, high-res images for grading are a second set of skills, because grading is normally done in-hand with minimal magnification. VR seems like it might actually be of some use with grading because you could do the same rotation of the coin you might in-hand, allowing you to better evaluate what effect the marks you see have on the actual grade. However, the same cautions about grading from high-res images (people learning it when they're already proficient graders consistently undergrade) apply. And you'd need a third set of standards to "translate" what you see in VR to what appears in-hand. Attribution: High-resolution still images. That is all. You're squinting at what might be a very tiny feature, and you really need it to hold still for you to look.
VR is usually equated with someone being able to immerse themselves in and control a 3D world. What is put into that 3D world depends on the task you want someone to accomplish in it. Simply blowing up a picture isn't sufficient to call something VR. You'd need an environment by which someone can manipulate the object (or other objects in its environment) such that you can accomplish the same task as you would with real objects in your real environment. For grading, there are two real objects -- a coin and a light. You need to aim the light at the coin and manipulate the coin under the light. Magnifying glass? Doesn't count. VR gives you really good eyesight at arbitrary magnifications, obviating the need for a magnifying glass. Of course, that good eyesight is predicated on a model of the object that accurately represents the object at arbitrary magnifications. Hairline scratches can be as small as 0.01 mm, so if you want to model them, you'll need to represent the coin down to that resolution in 3D, which comes out to about 22.8 million surface triangles for each side of a silver dollar. Creating this surface requires accurate 3D digitization of the coin to that level, too. The light is much easier to model than the coin, and as a bonus isn't constrained to real-world lighting attributes. With a VR light, you could easily change not only the position, but the color, intensity, and diffusion. This would be really nice for assessing eye appeal with a softer light and then examining the surfaces with a really hard light. You could also have an arbitrary number of lights. Die varieties require the same model as grading, but perhaps not to the same resolution. These have already been done to some degree by people doing focus-stacked images. A 3D model can be created from the slices, but with surfaces that have no specular reflection, as this can't be modeled with a static light source. One technology that came up here some time ago is Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI). It seems to me this would be a very interesting technology to apply to viewing coins in a VR environment. The image capture is a bit involved, as you have to reposition lights precisely and take a few dozen pictures that are then processed into a 3D surface map, but it does seem like it would be pretty cool. One of these days, if I get time, I'd like to build a rig for digitizing coins that would generate these images. I don't know how practical it would be, but I'd like to find out first hand. Many people can now produce excellent 2D images of coins, but the utility of a static 2D image is definitely limited. So what else can be done that's more than just really good 2D images that are bigger than they used to be? Stereoscopic imaging, whether using a viewer like Google cardboard or simply crossing your eyes, gives a much better look at the depth of a coin. Animations show a coin's interaction with light. Combining them precisely should give you the best of both worlds. I've done each separately, but haven't combined them yet. Another thing for my to do list, I guess.
I've experimented with a few techniques for rendered imaging. Straight 2D stacking, rendered 3D, and even a few animations. I'm still trying to figure out how to host/post animations straight from the rendering software, which might give some interesting perspectives. Take a look here: http://www.macrocoins.com/image-gallery.html
