Gates: Next decade will bring huge software advances

One thing that I think will quickly come of age, though, is camera-based head and pupil tracking.

Camera-based head tracking would provide a 3D experience as was shown with that Wii hack, but without the need for any headgear.

Accurate pupil tracking in particular needs camera technology that is only now becoming affordable. It needs either a very high resolution camera, or a typical resolution camera that is mounted on servos that keep the camera focused on the head and eyes no matter where they may bob.

Pupil tracking would not only provide a mouseless pointer, but it could also be used to compress video bandwidth. That is, a video client could track what part of the image the fovea is concentrating on. Then only that section of the video needs to be streamed in high resolution from the media server. All other sections can be streamed in a lower resolution for the peripheral vision. The latency between the client and server would obviously have to be very low, but it could provide some very high resolution detail, particularly for medical imaging.

it makes me wonder what sorts of things will be possible with a 'space computer'