Precisely what surprising thing went from being assumed non-possible to known possible through these folks' efforts?
This paper is pointing out that if you have sufficient fidelity, you can do this -- which isn't the science fiction part of the film plot, it was fundamental and now widely known (and frequently repeated in popular CSI type television and film, to the degree it has now spawned many parodies).
What was science fiction in the film was that somewhere "beyond the year 2000" you'd have a source image of sufficient fidelity to try this with -- and the paper hasn't changed that either, it is quite unlikely you are going to find matching fidelity images (39 megapixel) out of e.g. security camera or child abuse stills anytime soon.
The only novelty here is that the researchers have access to still camera that can take a photo of fidelity required to make this a real thing in their controlled conditions -- which is a little cool I suppose, but is that surprising? Things reflect light, and that kind of capability from imaging sensors is fairly established (yet still not widely available enough to produce real world applications).
They lean on this abstract with these crime solving use cases -- and if those things were real (even if you cheated and used the very top of the line consumer video recorders or security cameras or phone still cameras) then sure yeah that'd be remarkable and maybe people would be surprised by that (precisely because it is not physically possible).
It has been used in real-world applications for a while -- just not the dystopian kind we love talking about here.
E.g. check out this photogprapher's work:
https://petapixel.com/2015/11/27/a-wedding-photographed-thro...
It still is, that's not what the paper is about.
The paper really seems to amount to "gee, eyes are reflective".
I've never met someone who doesn't know that eyes are reflective.
>"Well now it's not."
It never was. Being able to turn corners in a picture was the science fiction part, not the fact that those corners had people in them.
Jesus how am I the only person here who understands this concept. It really isn't rocket science... the solution is solved by technology, not by progressive "methods" of using that technology.
But resolution is limited.
If you are so sure it's "obvious" you can extract recognisable faces from reflections on photographs containing eyes - show me you can do it using any photo containing a headshot you can find on Google Images or Flickr... Or even any staged photo you have or can take - showing enough resolution from a headshot that you can extract recognisable faces from eye reflections. I have a 12 megapixel camera in my phone - and I'm not convinced I could reliably take a photo of someone's face with enough resolution to pick to recognisable detail in a reflected face in an eyeball...
I am sorry, but megapixels do not a good camera make.
My Fuji X100 (35mm prime) and Nikon D200 (50mm prime), the latter from over a decade ago, both easily produce clear pictures in eye reflections when the light is good.
That said -- have you actually tried?
I just took a selfie with my MotoG5s front camera, and I can see a face from my FB feed reflected in my eye. And that's in crappy office lighting, from a screen with brightness turned down to minimize strain!
>Or even any staged photo you have or can take
To re-iterate: it is ridiculously easy to take such a photo with a real camera with decent lens. Modern cell phone cameras are capable as well if the light is good.
Here's a non-attempt: just a crop from the selfie I took
You can't, because the information isn't there. The same way you can't read a book that is closed, even with a super computer.
"Moon landing? Bleh, who cares. We know the moon is a planetoid and how far it is, why is it interesting when we land on it? I've never met anyone that didn't know it was possible to land on the moon."
The contents of the paper is pretty much contained in its title. They took photos and saw faces reflected in eyeballs! That's it!
People have been doing that since, well, cameras were invented. And people have been staring into reflections in eyes since forever.
"My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,
And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;
Where can we find two better hemispheres,
Without sharp north, without declining west?"
-John Donne (1572-1631)
Everybody "knows" that scene from Blade Runner is "just science fiction". Well now it's not.