The actress sits in a dome-shaped metal cage, surrounded by lights and cameras. She closes her eyes and the lights start flashing. In less than a minute the cameras have captured enough data to create a 3D digital double that can be aged, given a sun tan or realistically illuminated to fit into almost any situation. It's a glimpse of a future where real and virtual will become indistinguishable. Already a team led by Hanspeter Pfister at Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Markus Gross at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland, is using the 2.5-metre-wide dome to make digital clones of human faces that they can recreate on a computer screen under any lighting conditions. "I could place you anywhere - outside on a beach in the sun or inside a dark church," says Pfister.
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