The Powerful Tech Behind Both Waymo and "Avatar"

PLUS: From the Small Screen to the Less-Small Screen

Author

Steve
July 01, 2025

Hola Hollywood tech nerds!

In this week’s post:

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The Powerful Tech Behind Both Waymo and Avatar

Since I live here in sunny Los Angeles, California, I have occasion to utilize Waymo, Google’s self-driving car project which is available for consumer use here and in a few other metropolitan areas. It is admittedly pretty neat, and probably the most impressive tech product that’s been released in years. An actual self-evident use case! Some other hyped-up tech could learn from Waymo’s example (*cough cough*)

That’s not to say Waymo and self-driving cars in general don’t have their issues, from job-killing to Malcolm Gladwell’s interesting perspective on their future:

@wallstreetjournal

Author Malcolm Gladwell explains why he thinks driverless cars will fail in urban centers—and why he ran circles (literally) around a Waymo vehicle.

Anyway, the future and ethics of Waymo aren’t the point here, but rather the technology that powers its self-driving capabilities: LiDAR (“Light detection and ranging”).

Waymo's current fifth-generation autonomous car is equipped with five lidars, six radar sensors, and 29 cameras…

The image on the right shows how Waymo's lidar can detect the presence of a pedestrian better than the robotaxi's camera. [Co-CEO Dmitri] Dolgov called it the Waymo Driver's "superhuman sensing ability."

Pretty neat! What’s also cool is that LiDAR happens to be a super useful tool in the world of film pre-visualization, production, and post-production! VFX Voice lays it all out:

Virtual production has caused LiDAR scanning to become an essential tool in creating virtual versions of actual locations. “Productions can now capture detailed LiDAR and photographic data to generate photorealistic digital environments,” states Dominic Ridley, Director & Co-Founder of Clear Angle Studios. “This allows directors and teams to explore virtual locations in VR before the actual shoot takes place, offering a new level of flexibility and planning. This is especially useful for films that need complex set extensions or large-scale environments, where building everything physically would be impractical or impossible. By using LiDAR for virtual scouting, filmmakers can make better decisions about camera placement, lighting and scene design, saving time and resources during production. The ability to navigate these virtual environments also helps teams visualize and adjust scenes long before they hit the physical set.”

LiDAR has been invaluable while filming the Avatar sequels for the eyeline system and Simulcam. [Head of Virtual Production at The Third Floor Casey] Schatz says, “The eyeline system is a small monitor and speaker that moved around the set via four cables, much like a cable cam you’d see during a sporting event. It was a neat way of physically representing the CG character on set for the live-action talent to respond to. As the set was being lit and other departments would descend onto the set with their required gear, I would do a LiDAR scan almost hourly and run the simulation to ensure the cables would not intersect. This let us find clashes before running the system and allowed us to make slight adjustments and compromises.”

It’s not just bulky LiDAR devices either. They’re also using phones!

Smartphones with LiDAR come in handy. “If we are ever in a pinch, and it’s a scene that I didn’t expect anything to be needed, and suddenly we have to add x, y and z, rather than bring out a LiDAR team, I do a quick scan on my phone,” remarks Mark Russell, director and VFX Supervisor. “At least it gets you the basic geometry of a scene, which greatly helps in recreating stuff. There is an app called Polycam that is spectacular when it comes to that.”

I’m just glad this human and environment-scanning technology is only being used for good and won’t fall into the hands of evil corporations!

From the Small Screen to the Less-Small Screen

I found fascinating these two articles from the New York Magazine umbrella: “How YouTube Won the Living Room” and “Are You Ready to Watch TikTok on TV?” I probably don’t have what would be considered “normal” viewing habits and subscribe to way too many streaming services, a number that has been described as anywhere from “excessive” to “deeply sick!”

That said, I definitely spend a lot of time with YouTube on, although primarily in the background. It has completely supplanted the low-commitment type of TV that in the past would be filled with cable news, house-flipping shows, and various Law & Order reruns. It’s a mode of media consumption that YouTube is uniquely situated to capitalize on.

I’m less sure about whether people are “ready to watch TikTok on TV.” The article says with confidence:

It’s also a bet, though, that people will just watch TikTok as it already exists, just on their TVs. Streaming TV and the endless feed of TikTok videos might be formally different, but in a grim, abstract sense — the sense that matters most to companies built on advertising — they’re really pretty similar: passive video-consumption platforms on which heavy viewers spend multiple hours per day.

I’m also a regular TikTok user and perhaps this is just my old man brain talking, but I don’t know if TikTok can easily make the jump to TV without any modifications. It requires too much input; if you leave on a TikTok it will just repeat in an endless loop. It’s not really designed for the ideal background noise that YouTube can provide.

Readers: what do you think? I would love to hear your impressions. Email me at [email protected]!

Here’s a round-up of cool and interesting links about Hollywood and technology:

How Netflix and director Jeremy Saulnier created a streaming hit. (link)

Creating the “holy grail of computer graphics” in Tron: Ares. (link)

What AI will (and won’t) disrupt in Hollywood. (link)