Webcam "thought experiment"

[Shadow]

I was thinking. If you have two people sitting at their computers with webcams pointed at themselves, they each see the other person on their screen. Then one of them puts the webcam picture on fullscreen, and points his camera at the screen. Person A will see himself on the screen, while person B will still see person A. What happens if person A also switches to full screen, and points his webcam at the screen? Note that I mean in such a way that only the screen is visible in the outgoing signal, no background of the room or something. What do they see? We finally came to the conclusion that you either see what's reflected from the screen, or if for some reason there is 0% reflection you see blackness. Is this correct?

[ydoaPs]

I was thinking. If you have two people sitting at their computers with webcams pointed at themselves, they each see the other person on their screen. Then one of them puts the webcam picture on fullscreen, and points his camera at the screen. Person A will see himself on the screen, while person B will still see person A. What happens if person A also switches to full screen, and points his webcam at the screen? Note that I mean in such a way that only the screen is visible in the outgoing signal, no background of the room or something. What do they see? We finally came to the conclusion that you either see what's reflected from the screen, or if for some reason there is 0% reflection you see blackness. Is this correct?

 

You will get a feedback loop. The angle and any change in the picture(such as the act of moving the webcam to face the screen or waving your hand in front of the camera) will affect the outcome. One of the simplest feedback loops is the 'corridor' formed by nested screen edges.

 

Douglas Hofstadter talks about this in 'I Am A Strange Loop'.

[Shadow]

Oh...thanks And if you turn on the cameras facing exactly the screen, what would one see?

[insane_alien]

a corridor same as you would if you just used the one camera.

[John Cuthber]

Is this the high tech equivalent of standing between two mirrors?

[tomgwyther]

They used it in Queen's video for Bohemian Rhapsody by pointing the camera at it's own monitor

 

 

The corridor effect is in the second half of the video.

[Shadow]

a corridor same as you would if you just used the one camera.

 

How do you get a corridor with only one camera? Person A(the pointer) sees person B on his monitor, and nothing else. Person B sees himself in his computer monitor. Nothing else. Or is my imagination faulty?

 

 

Is this the high tech equivalent of standing between two mirrors?

 

As far as I know, yes, but with the mirrors it's easier since you just see yourself over and over again. But with the webcams, there is nothing to see...

[insane_alien]

shadow, take your web cam, bring up the screen to display the cameras output, point camera at screen, ????, profit!

[Shadow]

Prerequisite #1: Webcam