HD Virtual 1080

Among other things besides HD cable and DVD, there are other full screen 1920x1080 places to go and visuals to get, live and interactive for those who have a computer attached to a DVI input capable HD monitor.

Firstly and foremost, you need a powerful graphics card, nVidia 7600gt is a great bang for the buck there, and my system is a dualcore 3ghz connected to verizon FIOS, so my interaction is quite good.

SecondLife

Normally i have some measure of disdain for virual worlds and the addicted virtual user, but Second life has attracted a lot of talented graphics artists and the newest rendering engines make this worth a diversionary moment or 2 just to look at. Therefore, each thumbnail below links to a 1920x1080 screen snapshot so that you can see also.




This is Arcadia - a floating tudor village



This is Arcadia - my avatar in the street


I get about 29 frames per second update speed from mouse moves that change the full screen, and zooming into a location always produces more detail and things to see and do. This is basically an interactive solids modeling system where users provide the texture maps for the solid model primitives, cube, sphere, cone, cylinder etc. The rendering engine is called Windlight and since it runs on your computer, only changes to the world data are sent. That can mean a lot of new data when the screen is full of other people walking around.




A garden enviromnet with flowing water and waving tree leaves.

The tessellation ( polygon density ) of the modeing is quite accurate, so zooms into detail are generally rewarded with an image in greater detail, except for inserted video which is streamed off other servers and is mapped in quicktime.




my Avatar looking at my video edit of the Area 51 Midway ad- in quicktime on virtual HD screens - Click for the video itself

... expect to waste a couple of hours at least ... but it is free and HD capable.
http://www.secondlife.com/

If you have wireless Keyboard and Mouse, then this is wonderful exploration, provided you stay in locations that are well crafted, everything you see in HD will look great. Since the "teleport" function can lead to rather excplicit mature environments, it is expected that users are over 18.

Hit the PageUp key and your avatar can fly like superman through the scenery, chat with other users in real-time. The virtual Day-Night cycles provide rather stunning lighting in the Windlight viewer, almost to the point where a virtual set could be made to angle and light a movie set in pre-production mode if so-inclined... and i will make an HD video of some travel inside this virtual modeling space. The architectural experimentation alone is worth the effort, and results are immediate, lighting control and surface textures rival today's videogames.

CBS and Cisco are already big into this ( and Sony BMG which is usually empty and abandoned, with concert stages and music video, whatever)
Visit -- http://alpha.cbs.com/primetime/csi_ny/second_life/
They have a virtual New York City already built. No kidding- look at thier video. CSI:NY is in Second Life, talk about convergence, virtual greeters... solve a crime or something.