In Virtuosity, due for British release next April, star Denzel Washington has a computerised double, manipulated by a PC, that performs the more unlikely stunts.

The actor was scanned with a beam of light from a 100 microwatt low-resolution red helium neon laser. A CCD (charge-coupled device) camera, positioned at right angles to the laser, picked up Washington’s profile as the laser moved around him, building a replica slice by slice. A second CCD camera took in details of his skin texture and eye colour.

The laser took about 17 seconds to work its way around the actor, collecting information from 512 slices. Each slice contained 450 points to give the computer a total of more than 230 000 reference points. This was too much information for the computer to work with, so a “decimation algorithm” was used to reduce the number of points to about 20 000.

“The decimation algorithm rolls over the data set and looks at the topology of the object,” says David Addleman, managing director of Cyberware, the company which pioneered the technology. “It leaves more information for complex areas of the head such as the eyes and lips than it does for the cheeks.” Next, the computer generated a skeletal electronic mesh in the shape of the actor. A programmer then mapped the texture of the actor’s skin and eye colour onto the mesh and recreated him electronically.

Addleman originally wrote the decimation algorithm to be used in conjunction with a program to transfer the information to a computerised milling machine – a tool for making engineering prototypes. Other applications have been found too. The US Wright Patterson Air Base is using a scanner to make better-fitting oxygen masks and body armour. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), also in the US, is scanning construction and farm workers to assess how much stress can be put on their backs.

In Virtuosity, director Brett Leonard used the system to scan in five of the main characters and regenerate them using software packages such as Adobe Photoshop and Autodesk’s 3-D Studio. The computerised images could then perform stunts such as Washington’s fight with chief bad guy Sid 6.7 on a high-rise building, as well as virtual reality battles which take place inside a computer.

The corporation is publishing a document this week inviting computer and television equipment companies to bid for the contract to overhaul its newsroom computer systems. The project is expected to cost around ÂŁ30 million.

The network will give journalists access to news wire services and 90 days worth of BBC radio and TV archives, as well as allowing them to carry out complex tasks such as editing and scheduling from their desktop computers.

“This will affect thousands of BBC employees, but not necessarily make them redundant,” says Roger Bolton, the general secretary of the union representing technical staff at the BBC. “There will be a serious need for training and new career paths over the next couple of years,” he says.

Until now, the BBC has run its archiving and library services as a separate division called BBC News Resources, which sells material back to News and Current Affairs.

When reporters need archive footage, News Resources provides a selection of clips, sending them by a variety of means ranging from motorbike to satellite, depending on how far away the particular newsroom is. The journalists choose the footage they want, book time in an editing suite, and “cut” a report together. The report then goes to a news editor for approval and scheduling, before ending up in the transmission room ready for broadcast.

With the new system, footage will be digitised and stored on the news rooms’ computer servers when it arrives after filming. The journalists can call up the footage, which will be displayed using the Quicktime Video standard, which is commonly used to pass video around the Internet.

Using cut and paste techniques common in wordprocessing, the journalists can create a rough cut of the report. The software will then create a list of cutting instructions, which is transferred to the server where the rough cut is automatically turned from Quicktime Video into broadcast quality footage. The final report is held in the server’s news “basket”, approved and scheduled by a news editor from their own desktop computer and broadcast automatically.

“We have evaluated most of the newsroom systems on the market but not found any that fulfil our requirements, so we have designed our own architecture,” says Mel Martin, the BBC’s director of electronic news production.

“The technology is changing so fast that from the time the equipment is bought to the time it is installed it is out of date. So every component of the system can be independently upgraded,” he says.

The new network will be phased in over the next couple of years. The first stage will be to install large-scale databases to store text. These will later be upgraded to cope with video.

Independent news broadcasters in Britain and around Europe are believed to be contemplating similar changes.