Diminished Reality

[August]

Originally Posted by Penguin

Actually in theory the invention works like this:
Say you are a friendly dictator who wants to hold a speech in front of the masses. And say that you have a healthy hatred against persons with blue hats. So you feed the image of objects who have the size and the colour of a person with a blue hat to this software.
The camera shows the masses listening to your speech, suddenly an insurgent with a blue hat jumps into the picture. The image of the person travels with the speed of light to the lens of the camera which catches this image. Before the image gets recorded or broadcast, the software manipulates it and changes the image by cutting out the person and fills the hole with something that makes sense - maybe a person with a red hat

Your analogy makes sense but the filler has to not only be the same general size and in scale with the surroundings it also has to have a valid purpose for being there.

For example you can change the hat color but you also have to provide a plausible reason for the red hat jumping into the picture, as well as the Dictators security team and the crowd responding to the presence of the now deleted insurgent.

Now all of this could certainly be achieved given enough time for the manipulator to consider all the angles and ramifications but trying to do it all live just seems to me like a recipe for getting caught doing it.