Virtual Clothing Mirror

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German researchers a while ago, perfected the first versions of an augmented reality mirror - that is to say, a reflective pane in front of a display screen with hidden cameras, that possesses the ability to reflect what you would look like wearing that new dress, without your actually having to put it on.

The mirror works, as a decisive improvement to similar clothing AR mirrors that have been tried in the past, by creating a 3D avatar model of you as you stand in front of it. This is not displayed, merely used to calculate your proportions and how clothes should fit, if you were to twist or twirl.

Sadly, it will not show you in any outfit you bring off the rack, only those that are in its database. A touch screen off to one side allows the option to change the garment, or switch to another design pattern.

The clothes are stretched within the parameters of the fabric, to fit over the 3D representation of you in memory. If they won't fit, they don't. This prevents any illusions, and ripping of cloth. When they do fit, because they are modelled to a rough outline of you, it is fairly straightforward to keep up the overlay of the virtual garment on your actual reflection in real-time, as you do turn and twist, and pirouette about.

Shadows and folds in the material are represented realistically, with the not inconsiderate computing power behind the mirror. But then, billowing fabrics are not exactly in its repertoire.

The purpose behind the mirror, is obvious, and later models will presumably be fitted with a barcode scanner, and have access to the full range of clothing models for the clothes offered at the store they are found in.

A short sample of the mirror, on virtual shirts

Here, she is wearing that T-shirt physically, yes. However, the one she is wearing, is being superimposed by virtual colours and designs. The colour of the one being worn, is irrelevant.

Notice the thumbs. Because the computer system has generated a 3D avatar copy of the person, based on several cameras located about the 'dressing room', it has her hands in its memory, and can map the fabric round them, purely by moving the avatar model in memory, to the best fit of her actual movements. In this scenario, the avatars thumbs are over the garment, so the garment is not projected for that location.