backtop

Print 28 comment(s) - last by GlassHouse69.. on Sep 9 at 10:49 PM

Star Wars Hologram  (Source: University of Southern California)

Holographic Display Set-up  (Source: University of Southern California)
A team of University of Southern California researchers develops most realistic holographic display yet

What would be the Holy Grail of display technology in the 21st century?  Without a doubt, the promise of cheap, three-dimensional displays would turn everyone's head.

A group of researchers including Andrew Jones, Ian McDowall, Hideshi Yamada, Mark Bolas and Paul Debevec from the University of Southern California (PDF) have developed technology that produces a 3D hologram viewable from all sides.

This technology is described as a low-cost 3D display system with a form factor that offers advantages for displaying objects in 3D. The system is comprised of a rapidly spinning mirror covered by an anisotropic holographic diffuser, a motion controller, high-speed video projector and a standard PC.

The team used DVI output form a single NVIDIA 8800 video card interfaced with the projector using a FPGA-based image decoder. The mirror is tilted at 45 degrees and reflects the light from the projector to all possible viewing angles around the display as it spins.

The video demonstration (.MOV) shows simple graphics displayed in a very solid looking 3D rendering. The mirror spins at 900-1200rpm and the visual refresh rate is 15-20Hz (30-40Hz color) and the resolution is 768 x 768. Currently the color depth is dithered black and white or two-color DVI only.

One interesting aspect of the demonstration is the ability to manipulate the hologram to see different views of the projected object via a motion control. This new technology produces holographic images that look more realistic than other holographic displays.

Comments     Threshold


This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled
Credit where Credit's due
By ninjit on 9/7/07, Rating: 0
RE: Credit where Credit's due
By KristopherKubicki (blog) on 9/7/2007 2:58:19 PM , Rating: 2
Hi Ninjit,

The creation date for this article was 8/31/2007 5:06:19 AM. I'm willing to share the source file if you're interested. We were holding onto it in an attempt to get USC to comment on the device, but we received no response.

I think you'll see tons of other media picked it up earlier this week as well. For example:

http://www.engadget.com/2007/08/31/researchers-dev...

Kristopher


RE: Credit where Credit's due
By ninjit on 9/7/2007 3:25:06 PM , Rating: 2
Thanks for the quick response Kristopher.

I thought it was very pointed when this article came out the day after the comment without any mention of the DT member - which I thought was odd because normally I do see references to comments when you get an idea from one.

Thanks for the clarification.


RE: Credit where Credit's due
By Pandamonium on 9/8/2007 12:44:03 AM , Rating: 2
Ditto. I first heard about this news after clicking a link a DT commenter posted under the clip about 3D DLP. It's a little strange to have DT publish "old" news that can be found in previous comments. It's also unusual to have the timeliness of news take priority over the content- I usually see something along the lines of "___ was unavailable for comment at the time of this release."

Link: http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=8769, under GrandMareg.


By KristopherKubicki (blog) on 9/8/2007 12:52:12 AM , Rating: 3
quote:
timeliness of news take priority over the content

That's the nature of the beast. If we had no need for content and unlimited time to publish, every article would be a masterpiece on DailyTech :) But you'll find all newsrooms are the same. Everything has deadlines.


RE: Credit where Credit's due
By GrandMareg on 9/8/2007 1:39:58 AM , Rating: 4
Bah, I don't need credit. I got my 5 star rating already which means people appreciated the info I gave.

Keep up the good work DT and co-members.


untitle
By nace186 on 9/7/2007 12:58:54 PM , Rating: 3
quote:
What would be the Holy Grail of display technology in the 21st century? Without a doubt, the promise of cheap, three-dimensional displays would turn everyone's head.


You mean cut everyone's head. There's a reason why it's enclosed in a cage. It spin so freaking fast. I'm curious what's the maximum size it can be.




RE: untitle
By SomeYoungMan on 9/7/2007 1:51:34 PM , Rating: 1
Car engines cycle at thousands of RPM. Hard drives and optical drives, too. Heck, even my washing machine spins at 1,000 RPM (Fisher & Paykel). So, what's your issue?


RE: untitle
By leidegre on 9/7/2007 2:17:02 PM , Rating: 3
You can look, but no tuching, or you could, but you'd lose your hand.

Hehe, it's certainly cool research, and actually a bit old. But it does show great promise. However I did read about a similar thing, but it' used dust/water vapours to achive a similar result. That to be a really practical way to do it, as there's no moving parts there...


RE: untitle
By leidegre on 9/7/2007 2:17:13 PM , Rating: 1
You can look, but no touching, or you could, but you'd lose your hand.

Hehe, it's certainly cool research, and actually a bit old. But it does show great promise. However I did read about a similar thing, but it' used dust/water vapours to achive a similar result. That to be a really practical way to do it, as there's no moving parts there...


RE: untitle
By TSS on 9/7/2007 3:04:26 PM , Rating: 2
yoyu mean the news message that came around a long time ago now, which projected an image through the help of lasers onto a cloud of heated vapor. tough it seams the practical way, you are never going to get that cloud to move straight, the room will heat up a lot because you basically have a boiler on a lot(kids these days...).

also, the mirror is used here, as it says in the article, to reflect the light to all possible viewing angles. so from what i gather its actually a damned simple solution: get a normal projector, code it to project the right stuff in the right place on the mirror, then have the mirror spin the image around. if you look closely, it looks like the image is encased in some murky air :P vapors couldn't achieve the same effect, though you might get a purty rainbow.

but there is a little error in the text, the holy grain isn't 3d television, its 3d television in plain mid air. if we still need a stable screen, whether be it a mirror, vapors or the ol' tube, it will never be true 3d, since there will always be something to drag you out of the illusion.


RE: untitle
By leidegre on 9/8/2007 2:33:02 AM , Rating: 2
Nothing is impossible, yet alone improbable. To simply state that it's never going to happen, is to me to be a bit ignorant. Because we dont know until we tried that it wont work and if you deny every thought just becuase it's seems unlikely (or that you dont have enough info on the subject), you're going to miss out on so many great things. Keep pushing forward.

It's a good motto.


3D programming
By 16nm on 9/7/2007 1:06:24 PM , Rating: 2
Can you imagine a 3D Windows and having to program for it. Wouldn't that add a nice little headache to a programmer's day? Managing code is enough work alone but turning every GUI program into a 3D cad program doesn't sound like much fun. I hope Microsoft would come up with an API that made it totally effortless. But still, this is very cool.

Too bad they didn't do a 3D image of the Princess Leia. LOL.




RE: 3D programming
By exdeath on 9/7/2007 3:42:16 PM , Rating: 2
It wouldn't be any different at all actually. All you'd have to do is remove the final step of the perspective divide that collapses the unit cube clip volume to your 2D monitor and you instantly have true 3D. The programming of stuff in 3D doesn't change at all.


RE: 3D programming
By 16nm on 9/8/2007 9:54:49 AM , Rating: 3
quote:
It wouldn't be any different at all actually. All you'd have to do is remove the final step of the perspective divide that collapses the unit cube clip volume to your 2D monitor and you instantly have true 3D. The programming of stuff in 3D doesn't change at all.


Objects that already are 3d today won't really change, but I said Windows. Windows is 2D.

Anyway, I've just realized that the only way for a computer to truly render something 3D is by using a 3D printer. This 3D display is really a trick. It's still 2D. It is exactly the same as looking at a 3D object on your screen.

But back to your point, Windows does not render anything in 3D. So if MS wanted to make Office a true 3D application they would have to 1. figure out how to make their software more productive using the 3rd dimension (not an easy task) and 2. modify code to this new design. It would be a lot of work.


RE: 3D programming
By cupocoffee on 9/7/2007 9:39:01 PM , Rating: 4
I can only think of what a 3D blue screen of death would look like.

- Side note: I was thinking I would not post this since it is rather negative, however, in the middle of that thought, there it was...That wonderful blue screen popped up, and my computer instantly shut down. So, now that I've booted again, I decided to post. I'm not lying...Hilarious.


resolution
By jaybuffet on 9/7/2007 2:39:08 PM , Rating: 5
is that 768x768 or 768x768x768?




Neat
By Spivonious on 9/7/2007 2:04:22 PM , Rating: 2
But this would be a lot cooler if it really was a hologram, i.e. you could stick your hand into the image. Once they master that, lightsabers can't be too far off.




RE: Neat
By codeThug on 9/7/2007 3:16:14 PM , Rating: 2
You can stick your hand in it, after taking the Plexiglas hood off, however it might not come back in the same condition...


Movie link no worky
By Bremen7000 on 9/7/2007 7:02:56 PM , Rating: 2
Looks like they took it down or moved it. :(




If it only it was the death star
By JSK on 9/9/2007 6:25:17 AM , Rating: 2
And in red...

"Dangerous to your starfleet, Commander; not to this battle station."




By GlassHouse69 on 9/9/2007 10:49:03 PM , Rating: 2
YES!

a tie fighter is a great one to put up,

but we all know a sketchy shot of a death star would be cooler.

or the old Obi-wan kenobi, you're our only hope :)


By Scorpion on 9/7/2007 1:00:36 PM , Rating: 3
Neato
By v1001 on 9/7/2007 1:07:22 PM , Rating: 2
The Haunted House at Disneyland just wont be the same after these come out.




No holy grail...
By exdeath on 9/7/2007 3:38:59 PM , Rating: 2
The holy grail of imaging technology is FREE SPACE projection that doesn't require a medium.

Something like a invisible charged particle emitter that raster scans a short distance out in space such that the colliding particles hit at each 'pixel' and emit a visible photon apparently out of thin air without requiring a reflective screen or suspended medium.




I want to touch
By jmunjr on 9/8/2007 5:24:00 PM , Rating: 2
When they make one that we can manipulate with our hands directly I'll even more impressed




Terminology
By pkanar on 9/8/2007 6:55:09 PM , Rating: 2
The article title goes a bit overboard, by calling this a holographic display. The correct technical term is volumetric display. A holographic display would be contained in a 2D surface (just like an LCD panel is today). I think such technology is at least 25 years away.




"Folks that want porn can buy an Android phone." -- Steve Jobs











botimage
Copyright 2012 DailyTech LLC. - RSS Feed | Advertise | About Us | Ethics | FAQ | Terms, Conditions & Privacy Information | Kristopher Kubicki