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High-res Volumetric 3D Display Prototype
Gregg Favalora wrote in to plug his company Actuality Systems, Inc., which is working on a 90 voxel (8 color!) volumetric display. Could be useful for stuff like air traffic control. Or playing that chess game that we saw in Star Wars. Its not even a finished prototype, I'm actually posting this 'cuz I'm curious what uses people could think of for something like this.
The device doesn't know where your head is so it can't do hidden surface removal. Surfaces behind the frontmost just shine through. There have been other technologies that work similarly (that essentially place a colored dot somewhere in 3D), but this "shine-through" problem tends to be too disturbing for human viewers.
You should check out FSV. It uses openGL to represent part of (or all) your filesystem. It uses volume to represent file/directory sizes. It's great for seeing where all that HD space goes.
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[Science] is one of the very few things that raises human life a little above farce and gives it the grace of tragedy.
um... are you saying that x, y and z can't be used as dimensions because I can't be at (1,1,1) and (2,2,2) at the same time?
Duh, I was thinking about it from the wrong perspective.
Only my JPEGs understand me.
The thing looks pretty cool, uses normal light as opposed to lasers, but the only stuff they have on their site as far as screen shots go are picutres of employees playing guitars and the like. Still, 90 Million voxels is pretty sweet. I'd love to see a demonstration of that thing
This would be great for something like visualization of network traffic and perhaps for security analysis. The ability to turn raw IP address, ports, time, and amount of data into something visual would be phenomenal. It is done to a limited extent today, but I think this would provide a much needed new light on the subject.
I remember seeing something on beyond 2000 a while back about a security organization somewhere in Europe that was developing a method of analyzing data by creating an interconnected 3D mesh of objects. The display was on a flatpanel of course, this would make something like that much more useful.
Casca
Here is an example of a 3D filesystem viewer. Something like this would be very useful, I wish someone would finish this one.
Casca
use it sort of a lava lamp kinda deal. But instead of it having gobbs of gup like lava lamp, have real time rendering of new-clear explosions.
That would be cool as hell as an xmms plugin.
:-)
Hey, I'd love to have one of those but I'm going to have to wait till they come down in price a little bit.
In structural biology labs it is common to see an SGI machine with 3D glasses. Basically the 3D glasses are LCDs that alternate the transparency for each eye while coordinating it with slightly different on screen images. Much higher resolution than what we have here.
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
No, he was drinking out of a klein bottle.
Harsh stuff.
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
... and maybe their restrooms don't get cleaned often enough. What's that got to do with whether or not they can do what they claim? Maybe having a slashproof server isn't as high up on their list of priorities as doing actual product development.
Here is another instance of science fiction predicting the future. In Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land" there was a stereo-tank (it's been a while, I can't remember if this is exactly what it was called) that has an uncanny resemblance to the device described in this article.
Now if only everyone would join a polygamist marriage and stop wearing so much clothing.
With this particular display, you really don't want to put your hand into the topology! Don't forget there is a glass pane rotating in there at 600rpm...
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
It could display DeCSS code...IN 3D!
DVD's aren't even 3d yet which means DeCSS would not only break DVD "encryption" it would also further the humiliation by becoming technically superior.
I'm forking away from the LiViD project. Anyone who wants to join me in building 3DeCSS drop me a line.
=-Sonic
And as far as the vacuum being a problem to do, well, what do you think is inside your CRT?
You seem quite confident from having read the article. Thinking about what you read is, of course, the next step before posting.
Volume as size is kinda a bad idea. Sometimes really big files aren't that important. (Big tar files or packages or something) But little files often are (.login, makefiles, and so on) It would be hard to find your makefile if the executable is hiding everything or something...
Volume=file size?!?! My God, you'd need a nuclear plant just to view your Win2000 %systemroot%.
C:>cd winnt
(lights dim)
"Alert! Meltdown condition! Alert!"
C:\winnt>cd system32
(lights out)
"Core Explosion! Repent Sins."
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Nope, it's not about where one specific object can be. The problem is: a pixel can be at (0,0,10), and another pixel can be at (0,0,11), at the same time. However, you cannot have a pixel at (0,0,blue) and (0,0,red) at the same time.
Hmm, I may have formulated that a bit unclearly. It's not about any one specific pixel. It's just that you can have a 3d image with a dot at (0,0,10) and in the same image a dot at (0,0,11). However, you cannot have (0,0,green) and (0,0,pink) in the same image.
Colour cannot be seen as a dimension, unless a pixel can be both blue and red at the same time...
Time otoh....
I once spoke to a derivatives trader. - As a side note -- derivatives are tradeable securities that are synthesized by combining other also "tradeable" securities. As you can imagine the market forces that drive the price of these tools are extremely complex. Anyway, this derivatives trader told me that they use coloured 3D models to model how any particular derivative is doing... like If it looks like a donut - its a sell but if its long and fat like a (Canadian) football its a strong buy... Anyway this would be a kinda cool application for this display. Plus if it makes derivatives trading easier you could stick the trading companies for a huge amount of cash!!!
hah--just a couple minutes ago I was watching "pushin tin"(john cusak, billy bob thorton as air traffic controlers) at one point they use a spiffy 3D thing to show what is going on in the guys heads
Slackware: old school feel, new school gear.
Like in Hackers? If so I better go buy some rollerblades.
What you've really got is a way to display 4 dimensions of data (3D plus color).
... check outlavaps for a nice example of this.
Actually, brightness also works
So this is like Nicodeamus' "magic whirly thing" from the kids' cartoon movie, "The Secret of NYMH?"
At the resolution they are developing right now, tho I don't see much adoption by the 3D animation world except in very big houses, and even then mostly as a toy or proof of technology. Before it really becomes useful it will have to support much higher resolution, color depth, and have extremely fast updates for interactive feedback to whatever control system is driving it. Like the 3D printers... great future but a long long way to go before they become very useful and prevalent in the 3D entertainment industry.
P0rn.
-- IANAEG - I am not an elder god.
...is in the pudding. Show me one and I'll give my opinion. Without a demo model of any sort, my opinion is "Vapour Ware!"
My mind works like lightning. One brilliant flash and it is gone.
maybe it will put an end to those hidden-surface
removal algorithms.
Does anybody remember that Texas Instruments tried this a few years ago? They had the spinning screen inside a closed container upon which they projected an image. It didn't go over very well, since it needs a good sized, noisy motor to keep that disc spinning, along with the necessary motion of the optics. Who wants to work with a display that sounds like a laser printer, and breaks down just as much?
The first thing that any technology is widely used for: pr0n. The internet, DVD's, etc...
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File management?!?! You gotta think bigger. Network topology and system administration. A full objectoriented model of your network topology where each object contains administration objects, device objects, account objects, you name it... then, use a motion-sensitive glove to 'finger' through the topology to get to the object you want to manage. It could be used to report system outages, and the works....
Now, if they could only make one big enough to sit in.... VR here we come.
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
Wasn't that display just a 2 color display? We'd be more advanced than them!
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
I'm actually posting this 'cuz I'm curious what uses people could think of for something like this.
So, we have to rack our brains, thinking of ideas, wasting valuable time and energy, JUST to appease Taco's curiosity? HA! I think not! Now slashdot's agenda is clear...
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python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
What a great idea- submitting your own corporate site to slashdot and not first making sure it will survive being linked to.
With this kind of foresight, I'm sure the company will go far...
[R]emember, this is not something that is TANGIBLE, this is just a hologram, and a real hologram, like something you would dimply walk through.... there is no real mass
You could make a real mess though.
These are two things on my top 10 list. Flat panels will remove bulky monitors and real 3d will bring human/computer interaction to new levels.
There are so many areas with we could use computers better if we had 3d. I assume there would be many many medical uses for such a thing(assuming someone has not patented the use of 3d for medical use).
Right now though there is a great deal going on with the LCD and other flat panels. The iPaq, flat panel displays, and so on.
If and when someone breaks into the market with 3d it will change a great number of things that we do.
I hope this is not vaper. I have not heard of something this good in a long time.
Ok, this is a lame post. I'm just all for it. 3d gives me a woody(not really, just quoting a Doom developer who was speaking about Linux).
Be seeing you.
-- Prepared at the direction of, or to be sent to Legal Counsel, in anticipation of litigation. Attorney Client Pri
many games could profit of it, e.g. DeltaForce. That was really a tough and exciting game. Unfortunately the engine was terribly slow, maybe this could improve it...
A monkey is doing the real work for me.
The article mentioned that the software rendering systems used for this display were proprietary. Why doesn't the company use an already-available rendering system like OpenGL?
OpenGL is already widely used in the scientific visualization community, and it has the advantage of hardware adaptability -- for example, SGI's Cave, mentioned before on Slashdot, uses a library derived from, and directly compatible with, OpenGL. If you have a program already written to use OpenGL it's trivial (as in, adding only a few lines of code) to get the software to work in the Cave.
Having to rewrite major portions of software to support their 'proprietary system' will be a pain (read: expensive). However, having to add only a few lines to your existing OpenGL code to get it to work would make it EXTREMELY desirable for many scientific and even home users.
kugano
No, it was a 3d wireframe projected over a table-like thing in the middle of the briefing room.
Quake 4! 3D carnage - I can't wait to see the splash damage in that :)
How about 3D nethack or something?
It seems to me that if I look straight down from on top of the center of the dome, I see nothing. This doesn't seem like true 3D, just like Doom isn't true 3D (collision detection done in 2 dimensions). Also, wouldn't it be cheaper to just spin a disc-shaped flat panel rather than projecting onto a disc-shaped screen?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
We could map the activity of Bill Gates' bank accounts in real time. Wow, all those pretty colors flittering about make me wanna hold up my lighter and yell, "Looking forward to seeing you on f**kedcompany.com soon - you loser!"
Or, you know some other legitimate uses like medicine and stuff..
What? I thought technology was supposed to be fun! :-)
Moderators need an additional choice: "Karma Whore" for people who cut-and-paste articles as their comments!
A 3D word processor? Sounds like that would be REALLY fat (bloated) to me. Just what the world needs, 3D Bloatware.
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Original Greek? I had no idea that ancient Hebrews spoke Greek. I think you'll find that the "Gehenna"/"Large, foul-smelling waste dump" mixup was caused when a missionary did not know the right words to describe hell but he did know the words for to describe the 'native's' large, foul-smelling waste dump that was just outside the 'village'. But I think you did have a point. This guy is rambling on about how sinful it is to alter the Bible and completely ignores the fact that it's an altered version (translated to English) that he is defending I would be interested in the catholic church's position on 3D volumetric displays. I'm guessing they forbid them.
It would seem that there are more than a few applications that this could be used for, everything from commercial use to military to medical. The questions I would have is what kind of cost range are we talking about for something like this? Is this something that might soon be affordable for the ultimate gaming display, or will it remain in the hands of a few corporations for the time being? Also, is this something that will take the complex and make it simple (such as the mentioned air-traffic control), or take the complex and make it even more so?
Um, not quite. It's actually a radial coordinate system, with a diametric resolution of 768 pixels. Check out this link for more info.
heh...now that I've got your attention...Besides the obligatory uses I would love to see this hit the CAD world. A tool like this would make construction documents (cd's)less error prone. In construction, quite often there are situations where symbols are located on cd's but the actual constructs don't become apparent until things are being built in field. Usually this is because of the scale of the drawings being too small (1/8 or 1/16) to illustrate say a series of conduits that would be miniscule at scale and in building cores things get pretty tight and at present the need for speed in document delivery negates the use of 3-D. I could see a 3-D symbol library heading off these problems rather quickly by giving architects and engineers a quick visual check on conduit/plumbing/hvac etc without the need for going all sorts of crazy to pop out a real 3d drawing which could take considerable(valuable) time and in the field would be pretty useless (read:most people on job sites have a hard enough time reading 2d plans correctly). Before you flame me... I realize that 3D is not hard nor does it take long for a good/experienced CAD jock to crank out (usually I draw in 3d with no time hit) but my experience (16 years) has taught me that most of the folks who use products like AutoCAD don't really bother to learn how to use it at the level that would be required for extensive 3D work efficiently in a collaberative environment. They either don't have the time or see CAD as 'just a tool' to get thier job done. Though this can be painfully frustrating for a CAD manager or power user, it is the truth. /. $authors)
Note to self: IF s/N ratio>=facts(old news +
Prospecting Stinks. Stop Wasting Time on Cold Calling.
My Lite-Brite does more than that, has more colors and the pins are 3D! Why ask more?
Wasn't that display just a 2 color display? We'd be more advanced than them!
Not really, that was a long time ago...
My other
Mmm Quake3 or Tomb Raider sound like a good fit for this thing, err uh everything but the 8 color thing.
RTS or Diablo2 would also be nice.
Dammit, games and porn, this thing would rule.
Oh and you could do all that scientific stuff to, like 3D landscapes, virtual sugery, etc, etc...
The best thing I can thing of those, is dim the light when you have a lady freind over and use it sort of a lava lamp kinda deal. But instead of it having gobbs of gup like lava lamp, have real time rendering of new-clear explosions. (requires 200,000 CPU beowaulf cluster and Windows 95 or greater)
Speaking of beowaulf clusters (or how ever you spell it), you ever see all those TV stacked up in a department store and display 1 image across 20+ screen so it looks like one big screen?
Are these things stackable?
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
I don't get it... a pixel can't be at x=5 and x=500 at the same time but that is still a dimension
What a terrible waste that would be! Applying the unintuitive and clunky file system concept when you have the capability for the ultimate in spatial interfaces! What use could the filesystem metaphor be, when you can simply create and manipulate 'objects' in 3D?
Those who do not know the past are doomed to reimplement it, poorly.
"Could be useful for stuff like air traffic control. Or playing that chess game that we saw in Star Wars."
So this is a stop motion clay animation system? Finally, in realtime!?
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nah... 3D Tomb Raider :-)
{} ------ When I think of a good sig, I'll put it here
Wait until you commit. The TCO goes through the roof!
.88 magnum -- it goes through schools.
--
It's a
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It's a
-- Danny Vermin
Another difficulty (though much less important) is that you cant show a mirrored surface. You cant even show reflections of parts of the image itself unless you know where the viewer is. Any thoughts on other limitations?
No more will you have to cross your eyes until they hurt to see something look truly 3D! Amazing!
You're nothing; like me.
I dunno, would anyone buy a monitor that only did 320x200x256? ... Oh, right, that used to be standard. Sure, what we're talking about here isn't of astounding resolution, but it's still usable ... don't just look down on something because you can imagine better. (Although imagining better is the first step to creating something even more impressive.)
That said, I'm sure you've noticed by now that dozens of people have pointed out that the display is something like 450x450x450, or 768x768x200, or something. Quite a bit better than 90x90 ... so are you going to go buy yourself one now?
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
And they're prone to crashing randomly as computers are.
- Amon CMB
Men believe what they want. - Caesar
Yeah, I did see that they say they're working on hidden surface removal, but this REQUIRES knowledge of the location of the viewer -- something they appear to be trying to avoid. (This assumes that they haven't come up with a way to fix the shine-through problem.)
Well, they were going to have a few squadrons to send in if Red Squadron and Gold Squadron couldn't cut it. Rouge Squadron was actually the third of these squadrons, after Teal Squadron and Mauve Squadron, and before Fuchsia Squadron.
Imagine if you will, The Future. The "phone" rings its mom & dad sitting on the couch, but you see them inside the 'dome' as if they were figurines in a 'snow globe' and they see you the same way. You could even make it snow on them.
The electric yellow has got me by the brain banana
With 8 colors, wouldn't you actually be dressing in 3-bit?
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You obviously have never read anything but the English version of the Bible. Let me enlighten you.
"Hades" has a big pagan meaning that is completely divorced from the Bible.
In all but one or two places in the original Greek Bible text, hell is represented by the word "Hades". How can you say Hades is divorced from the Bible when that is exactly the word the original Bible uses.
Have you ever heard people say they don't want to "go to gehenna?"
In the one or two places where "Hell" was not translated from "Hades", it was translated from "Gehenna" which is merely a large, foul-smelling waste dump. This makes you wonder if in these places the original Bible really meant "Hell" as we think of it today.
So, in conclusion, the biggest problem with Christianity today is the prominence of mindless blobs who believe and spout off anything their preacher/minister/pastor/etc tells them without doing any real research on their own to develop their own opinions and beliefs.
Since this thread has obviously gotten off topic, let me throw this in: 3D volumetric displays are the spawn of Satan and should be categorized with Harry Potter and human sacrifices, because that is what my youth pastor told me in Sunday school.
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Judging from the technique I expect it can only show transparent objects.
Each voxel is displayed for a short time and is at this time unobscured to the viewer. So every voxel along a line of view will be visible for a short time period. Your perception will fuse all the voxels displayed in your line of view.
I can't think of a way to display a solid object without knowing where the viewer is.
This may be a drawback for some applications, but is an advantage for others. Could be very useful in medical imaging.
Wow! and just think of how fat we could make word-processors if they were in 3D.. We can finally get the install files off of CD onto some sort of futuristic holographic tera-byte storing media.. Would want more than 8 colors tho'
air and light and time and space
Imagine a beef-up MAME running true 3D Tempest, Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back, or Quantum! I'd never see sunlight ever again...
Even some of the monochrome vector games would look cool on this, especially Battlezone, Red Baron, or Lunar Lander
These 3D tanks are expensive and bulky. Meanwhile advances continue to be made in putting images directly onto your retina (or brain). How far away do we think a good, portable vr technology is (such as eyeglasses or contacts that create the steroscopic images floating in front of your face)? 15 years? 20?
These technologies are more affordable and will be usable everywhere. 3D viewing tanks will always be more complicated and less portable. By that time, people will be walking around with their 3D displays 'built-in'. The dream of the classic '3D' projector seen in every space opera ever made will probably never come to fruition - there'll be no need.
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How many application have you ever viewed the object model for and it looks like spaghetti?
.sigs??
This would allow you to view all the objects and their relations to one another, and it would be extremely readable...
Complex UML with over 400 objects with tight relations, now becomes a readable document...
It doesn't have to stop there... any type of modelling that is complex is much much easier to view in 3D...
-- Don't you hate it when people comment on other people's
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Yeah, but what happens when you forget to pay your subscription to Micro$oft .clothing? Or if the system crashes?.....
awx
--
Vodka is not the Answer.
Vodka is the Question.
"Yes, Please" is the Answer.
Feel that power? That's mah MOUSING FINGER
For packing distress calls into innocent looking droids.
Why, what were you thinking of? Quake? Slashdot icons?
Not "flamebait", but an observation. They can put together a three-dimensional display but they can't handle being Slashdotted?
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Could everyone PLEASE stop hitting the site so I could get a glimpse of this?
Without having seen it, I could think of at least one STUPID application for this(prOn), how about a shooter game. Will it run OpenGL apps?
"You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake."...Tyler Durden
...would be to display the strategy for "operation: get behind the darkies."
I look fine in my BSOD (Blue Shirt of Death).
___
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
Wow, caching, why didn't anyone think of that before?
If you'd read the FAQ you'd know why he doesn't.
For something so benign looking its interesting that the graphic on the front page of actuality-systems is a jet dropping a missile of some sort.
It seems that this technology could do a lot more than just model tumors and flight patterns: it could choreograph a perfect fight.. Ender's game anyone??
-- Geek?
There are no actual images of product, and plans seem to be infeasable. Who cares anyway. US military will get it first ... you can see litte fighter jet on the
model rendering...
Somebody is already working on streaming 3-D pr0n, I'm certain.
could you make a larger one .. and get inside ... ? viola, HOLODECK! (plus those darn safety locks that are ALWAYS the first thing to break wouldn't be a problem...)
Internet killed the video star,
i could live a little longer in this prison
Because they worry more about content than splash. You know, steak not sizzle.
- - - - - - - - - - -
I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
Actuality Systems, Inc., a startup developing true three-dimensional display technology, announced today that it will be ready to demonstrate their prototype 3-D display in Q4 2000. Heh, for a second I thought they were talking about releasing Quake 4 in 2000 using this 3D technology. Alas, we'll have to wait.
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.
not 8 bit color, 8 colors. 3 bits per pixel, I think.
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
Does taking 2-D images of a 3-D display not make a lot of sense to anyone else?
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
1-real time stock market intutitive trading- 2-detailed modelng for remote guided weapons 3-p0rn
This is actually wrong. See below. The only see-through problem I can think of is seeing all the way to the other side of an object; with the way it seems to be constructed, it looks like the mirrors being in the center may fix this problem? IANAE, but that is what I understand from the white paper.
Also, keep in mind that they don't really have any working prototype yet, so they couldn't demonstrate it.
3. Proprietary algorithms and interface software Actuality Systems places considerable effort into inventing, testing, and optimizing high-speed and high-precision algorithms for fundamental tasks, such as:
(http://www.actuality-sys tem s.com/product_howitworks.htm)
Ceci n'est pas un post
So we will need 4 gigabyte of RAM for the display: 1024x1024x1024 32 bpp !!
Imagine sitting around your coffe table with the guys, watching the superbowl as if you were there... I guess you'd want more than 8 colors, but I think what would be worth paying for.
I think any sportscast would be enhaced by 3d, but I wonder how sitcom's would look?
Video games, of course, would also sell for a 3d display.
This is an interesting device, both for the way it was implemented and the peculiarities this produced.
The hemispherical display area is apparently 10" (250mm) diameter. The rotating nature of the screen means that the the voxels are a swept segment of cylinder. They are approximately 0.3mm square in the direction of travel, but their length of travel is different depending on how close to the centre they are.
This means that there is more detail at the centre of the hemisphere than at the edges. In fact, at the edges, the voxels are stretched out to ~ 0.3mm * 0.3mm * 4mm!
Interesting, but hardly revolutionary. I would be more interested in the use of LEPS or TFT style technology laid down in layers, possibly using a photo-lithography or similar process. Spinning disks reminds me far too much of John Logie Baird's mechanical television.
Take care,
Mark..........
--
If the world were an oyster, it would be mine.......
HELL YES! long live robotech
"I am a warrior, and information is my weapon..."
Another use would be, depending on its size, airtrafic control or military command and control.
This would be really neat to use in wearable computing and augmented reality.. Any idea how much it will cost?
[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
{Traicovn}
Yes, we must make sure that one of the EIGHT COLOURS is flesh...... by the way, remember, this is not something that is TANGIBLE, this is just a hologram, and a real hologram, like something you would dimply walk through.... there is no real mass....
[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
{Traicovn}
...called "Silver Tower" by Dale Brown. They had a satellite with a high-powered laser, as well as a heck of a targeting system. They ended up beaming the information from the targeting system down to a ship, where it was displayed in a giant LCD tank, and bingo - you had a 3-D image of every object over 1 metre in length, within 1500 kilometres of the battlezone.
Of course, they used the targeting information to shoot down ICBM's, but I thought the 3-D representation of all forces in the area was a pretty cool concept.
It may look like I'm doing nothing, but I'm actively waiting for my problems to go away.
--Scott Adams
Don't worry, porn is what drives technology. You ever see that ascii of a naked chick that dates back to like early 70s? It's a male dominated industry, if we can't eat it we will make it give us porn... hmmm, now that I think about it I can't wait to see 36-22-34-3D
disc-chord
"Though we say, 'all information should be free', it is not... information is power and currency in the virtual world we inhabit."- Billy Idol (1994)
There's been work on this since 1996 via MIT (and maybe another group) and so far zilch. It's seemed to have stalled similarly to how fusion stalled 20yrs ago and we'll probably not see it until after Mozilla 6...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Blazemail rocks!
Pffft....I have a monitor that displays only 90x90. It's called my TI-82.
-- Chris
$email=~s/[^a-zA-Z0-9@.]//g;
Signals freaks/geeks could use something like this. A 3d image of a signal that could then be manipulated more easily is an idea that might be possible for this monitor. I'm sure there are hundreds of other uses out there, not to even get started on the gaming possibilities.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
I LOVE YOU
great comedy company.
Um, there is a 3d pong...
Ok, maybe not in this context, but still... I for one never liked pong. Legend of Zelda was what brought me into videogames, and Mario.
Shit adds up at the bottom...
Check out dti3d.com. It's the shit.
Yup, I've got one, designed & built myself.
Check it out here: http://www.hilux.com/holodeee
-=Jose
"Volume rendering" is the computer graphics technique. "Volumetric display" is correctly used to describe this class of three-dimensional displays. Actuality Systems didn't invent the term.
Actuality's device is interesting because it includes a suitably powerful graphics subsystem with the display technology itself.
So, instead of sitting at a workstation, and being able to rotate and manipulate a pseudo-3D image on my CRT, I have to get up and walk around, craning my head to see the object from a certain angle. Why?
We see in 2D, for the most part. (I don't think there's _that_ much gain in taking advantage of depth perception. Heck, I get by with almost none every day.) So for scene reproduction, it's can't be much better than 2D. And I think the user-interface aspect of 3D displays is _worse_ than 2D.
It's got huge Hollywood potential, but I don't see what real advantage this has over "regular" 3D graphics on a 2D display. Especially since the pseudo-3D display can have FAR higher detail and complexity than a real 3D display at a given price-point.
The company claims 90 million voxels, not 90 voxels. Although 90 million may not be that impressive (448 voxels cubed), 90 voxels (4.5 voxels to a a dimension) is next to useless. Assuming 3 bits per pixel, you'd need 32 Meg just to run the frame buffer. I wonder what the graphic chipset is like.
I just went to their site... "Resolution Breakthrough: Nearly 100 million voxels" No lasers. No goggles. Just a spinning screen target that they shine light on. It's almost too good to be true- the resolution's just too high to be "real".
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If you play with the optics some, you can get away with a sealed dome assembly. Make it a vacuum container and drive the screen with a magnet motor. That will allow them to scale it quite a bit further. Not huge sizes, but allow it to be something manageable, about the size of a 19-21" monitor with no issues at all.
I'm a bit amazed at the claim of only 8 colors. With a little work, these beasts could do truecolor. Talk about mind-popping...
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
We're just not using them in that manner yet.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I'm surprised no one suggested the obvious. This would be a great way to torment pets. Have the display throw up a 3-D image of a cat, and watch Rover freak out as he tries to catch it.
Oh wait, is this the same system I read about a while ago that did its imaging on a reflective high-speed spinning helical surface? Then I guess it would end up turning Rover into mincemeat. Hey, I never said it was for tormenting pets you like...
Ever see Star Trek 3? There's a scene in the movie in a bar where these two people are playing a 3D dogfighting game. That's what came to mind when reading your post.
I think gamers would love this. Reason being alot of them are looking for the next "new thing". I think think this is it. Give it about 3 years when it mature you will see this at your local gameroom.
No? And it's only 450x450x450? Geez, I'll stick to my GeForce2 Ultra and a cheap-ass ViewSonic CRT.
I can see the fnords!
That's actually a Tobacco Mosaic virus, iirc. The same archetypical representative virus that's depicted in just about every high school biology textbook ever printed.
I can see the fnords!
The article even had diagrams for a vector display driver and assembler routines for 3D display...
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Americans are bred for stupidity.
The Neonics company makes a neon transformer that uses a standing wave to light a part of the tube, all controllable under software.
So, I guess it's only a matter of time until the thing is translated into 3 dimensions...
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Americans are bred for stupidity.
I can see a lot of uses of this in Research - specifically Nanotech, since its very difficult to picture how 3D objects get pieced together. This is especially true when complex geometry (helix, springs ) become the building blocks rather than primitives (cubes, spheres, cylinders,...).
Volumetric displays probably won't replace 2D displays for a long time, if ever, but I'll bet they'll have niches in which they're considered very useful. One such might be for collaborative work - having a group of people standing around a cube containing a 3D display.
Okay - this sounds cool, and it is impressive. But I don't see how this can help make drugs. I understand being able to visualize what the compound you are trying to make will look like, but can't that be done with cheaper off the shelf equipment already? What benifit would this have?
As far as I can see this is going to be part of two possible markets - video games and science museums. The video game aspect is, well, pretty obvious - the science museum thing would be cool because you could use it to display exhibit A today and five minutes later you could be all ready to use it on exhibit B - Like maybe have a holographic model of a machine or something.
I dunno - it is cool, but awful silly at the same time.
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How stupid of me!
So, we are talking about something real - even though it is not. Much like the hologram of a magnifying glass in front of a bunch of medicine bottles - you move your phyiscal being around and the image that you see throught the magifying glass is what you would see if it was there.
Hmmm. That makes a lot more sense to me now!
Okay - I take back everything I said. I want one of these!
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IBM was demoing something like this a few years ago at the University of Minnesota in the CSci building. They had on P90 laptop running the display, and another P90 rendering to it. Pretty sweet. Although, you could only look in from the front.
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...making a real-life 3D display or making some kind of working VR setup? Note that anything on the 3d display will be "ghostly" - I don't want to be looking through the front of whatever object and seeing the backside of it too. Whereas a single 2d screen that can send different images to your 2 eyes, and that can sense where your head is (and also tell when you move the screen itself) is probably much cheaper.
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Man, that would be great!
EMUSE.NET
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
...is display that hologram of Princess Leia from the first (at least released first) Star Wars.
What you've really got is a way to display 4 dimensions of data (3D plus color). There's lots of high-dimensional data sets in the world. The stock market springs to mind. Imagine looking at various ticker symobls and having price, volume, time, and delta (since start of day?) all shown at once.
We see in 2D, for the most part. So for scene reproduction, it's can't be much better than 2D. And I think the user-interface aspect of 3D displays is _worse_ than 2D.
Yes, our eyes see in 2D with little depth perception (our eyes are too close together for much triangulation at focal distances).
However, our HEAD is built for 3D. If you move your body one inch, your brain KNOWS how the scene should rotate or translate. And more importantly, vice versa: you rotate or translate the scene, it has the environmental context of the real world around the display, allowing you to judge angles and distances.
Secondly, a static scene appearing in 3D would have no device-introduced latency between "I want to see it from another angle", and "I see it from another angle". This is one of the major reasons for spatial disorientation with 2D display systems: latency between command and result.
The UI question, I don't think we've played around with enough. The "flying" UIs of virtual reality were just one step of an eventual flood of experimentation in 3-space user interfaces.
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At the end fo the day, this is just a more compact version of the spinning paddle display tank MIT showed better then 15 years ago.
I'd have to argue that it IS true three-D, though soem other posters are correct that the viewing angles are limited.
Their misue of "volumetric" though is annoying. Volumetirc rendiring and the term 'voxel' both refer to a tchnique for representing 3D data and rasterizing the 3D data so represented. It says nothing about the display device.
3D adds up fast, but static displays should not be that slow. If IDE cables can get 100MB/s... It's not like a 3D CFD problem, it's just a display.
One day, we will quake to this.
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Something similar, a vibrating-mirror 3D display, was tried in the 1980s. Ref: Mills, P.H., Fuchs, H. and Pizer, S.M., High-Speed Interaction on a Vibrating-Mirror 3D Display, Proc. SPIE: Processing and Display of Three-Dimensional Information II, Vol. 507, 1984, pp. 93-101. That became a product, but the product flopped.
The obvious use, other than the obvious Star Wars fodder, is in air traffic control. Those poor controllers are suffering information overload - maybe 3D visualization might help them out. Mind you, first they'd have to upgrade the systems to at least 1980s technology.
.88 magnum -- it goes through schools.
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-- Danny Vermin
I'd rather have a holographic image that you can reach into for your manipulations, but even 3D feedback is a good start.
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Imagine seeing ,from any angle and in 3-D, the process of puting something together. Something intricate and complicated. You could even zoom in on it and stuff :)
-Well, it may not take a Rocket Scientist to figure this stuff out, but I figure it can't hurt
Geeks! This is just too cool! :-)
John
John
Potential users include:
+ Scientists designing pharmaceuticals who need to quickly understand the 3-D shape of certain molecules.
+ Doctors who want to understand the location of a tumor within a patient's brain in a manner that enhances surgical planning.
Hmm.. Strange.. No mention of 8-colour volumetric Porn?
air and light and time and space
We saw how useful this technology can be in the latest Bond movie when the doctor shows Bond the bullet in the bad guy's head.
On Star Trek Voyager, the Doctor uses it to display scans, on Deep Space Nine they used it for communications purposes (as on Star Wars). There's plenty of good applications.
In the world of Sci-Fi, is this what is commonly known as Holotechnology? Or is that different somehow?
If not, soon we may have Holodecks like on Star Trek. I mean, your hand would go right through the images, but it would still be cool and good for REALLY 3d games!
Actually, you read my mind. The 3-D display's "proprietary rendering" algorithms relate to algorithms that are embedded in the display controller system. You'll never see them and you don't have to understand them (Fortunately!).
The user (customer) will actually be able to run a large percentage of OpenGL(tm) code directly on the display with little alteration, as you mention. We just have to be very careful about claiming "OpenGL" compatibility, etc., etc. But yes, lots of GL apps should be easily configured to run with the display. From the user's point of view, it's just a monitor...
(From a founder of the firm.)
Having worked on Computer Aided Moleculer Modeling rigs at CIBA (old E&S vector displays with funky goggles that used blink-based 3D), there is obviously a LOT you can do with a display like this: get a team of mad-science Pharma PhD gathered around a molecule, and poke into the interesting bits. Animate it. Unfold it. Make it jiggle. Enlightenment is thus facilitated.
I mean, for an industry that is going to dwarf IT in a few years, this is pretty big step forward. I could see a lot of smaller R&D companies wanting this technology, and it could help level the playing field when it comes to innovation in an industry dominated by giants like Ciba-Sandoz and Merck.
So this may be too expensive for a toy (unless your name is Bill), but there is a lot of ways you could use a holograph to help in processes that require modeling of spatial relationships.
Other uses:
- 3d modeling for entertainment... do any hardcore Maya people want to play with this toy?
- arcade games (obviously not for the first coupld of generations)
- military and space applications (more ways to present complex information = worth paying for)
- a VERY funk disco-lava-kaleido-globe that will awe the ladies and set the 'right' mood. (I *did* say enhance your special relationships with models, didn't I?...)
Until that time, there's still good-old hardware accelerated 3D, rasterized to fit your standard monitor.
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Build and view the model of a room you want to simulate the acoustics of (note... must have surround system too). If you leave out the acoustics, you have the virtual site tour that all real estate agents already think you can put on a web site.
:)
Really, there are probably a number of CAD applications that could benefit somewhat from this. This way, you wouldn't have to change your virtual point of view; you could just change your real pov (wait... is that an advantage?
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OK, I'm sure a few of you out there watched Robotech growing up. There was an episode where Max and Mirya fight on a simulator that pops up in from of them in 3 D. That's the game I'd want to see.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Yes... but the manipulation controls are SO hard to use
Mind you, the size of the domes isn't exactly huge initially [pic].
A quick search on IBM's Patent Database reveals reveals that The navy has some patents regarding 3D volumetric displays already and also shows the tech details behind the volumetric display used by these guys (One of the founders has patented the mechanism used)
Jon - TheSpork
Big whoop. 3D is old hat. Develop a display which allows you to visualize 4d or higher with a generalized Rieman metric, then we'll talk.
What's funny is that sega had a video game that did this about 8 years ago. I played it at disney land. Very cheesy game, but same basic tech. Can't remember the name....
Google to the rescue - it was called Hologram Time Traveler.
Here's a related link
Scuttlemonkey is a troll
The top end medical/seismic systems are running
about 20 gigavoxels.
There's a few things I don't get about this, like how *big* is it? Are we looking at something the size of a large ashtray, or would I have difficulty stepping over the thing?
:)
Anyway, since no-one else has done it I'm posting a link to deep video imaging (http://www.deepvideo.com/) who make 'actual depth' flat monitors. And besides, they're based in Christchurch - Go Kiwis!!
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
In medicine we spend a lot of time trying to view 3D structures by looking at 2D images and this sort of display system potentially could make things much easier. I've spent all day trying to look at people's hearts using X ray fluoroscopy (principles devised in the first half of the 20th century) and it's difficult to visualise what you're doing in 3D! Clearly in this situation real time 3D imaging would be tremendously helpful.
Incidentally, "Actuality Systems" display system has 90 million voxels, not just 90!
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The thing has mirrors and stuff spinning at high RPMs. Unless they put some really sophisticated accoustic damping on it, it's going to have an annoying audio output of some kind.
Sure it's cool, but it's really a brute force electro-mechanical approach. It's probably very expensive too.
Maybe someone will come along and figure out a way to precisely position electro-magnetic disturbances within plasma, Neon, or other gas in a sealed vessel.
Actually, I've been thinking that nano-projectors would really be the way to do this--ie, dynamic holography, something solid state. Each "projexel" would project a complete image. In fact, we could do this now. Just make a movie projector that fits within the volume of the lens. Cover a Jumbo-tron sized wall with them (yes, it would be very expensive).
From a distance, you would see a *much* larger than life 3d image. The trick is building cheap solid-state nano-projectors so you can fit it in your living room. Is anybody working on that?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
The resolution is great but the response time sucks.
.88 magnum -- it goes through schools.
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It's a
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It's a
-- Danny Vermin
Now, if I can just convince managment that it's the same price as a 17" monitor...
John
John
But, I think it is a good first step, just like early vga (and ega, cga before them) was.
11*43+456^2
Amen.
What people seem to be forgetting (or perhaps you didn't even read the article?) is the way the image is created. There's a screen rotating at 600RPM about a vertical axis, and the projector sticks an image on it every 1/20 second. You can't step inside it or reach inside with VR gloves to move stuff. In short, it's a 3D image, *NOT* a hologram.
There are some drawbacks to the design. First, at a certain size, the air resistance at the outer edges of the whirling screen will necessitate stronger materials, larger motors, etc. and it will very quickly become a big, noisy beast. Secondly, unless there's some very careful tinkering with the projection equipment, the voxels at the center are updated as often as the ones on the outside, resulting in squished (about the axis) voxels at the center and elongated ones along the outside. To make each voxel the same size, the refresh rate has to be proportional to the distance from the central axis.
I'm not saying it's not excellent tech, but it will be expensive to make it stable, properly proportioned, and quiet.
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Yep, that's 90 megavoxels. But before you get too excited, that's about a 600x600x250 pixel display. In 8 colors. So what we have here is the first 3D EGA monitor. :)
You need truly frightening numbers of voxels to do anything really interesting. I've done heat transfer simulations that crippled a SGI supercomputer for only a 30 cm tall by 50 cm wide tank filled with fluid. Shame the oil tanks we *wanted* to simulate were 10 meters high and 15 meters across...
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will provide the highest resolution volumetric 3-D imagery in the world. Multicolored images, comprised of over 90 million 3-D pixels called "voxels," will seem to float within its transparent viewing dome. And I thought the Chess game was originally on WestWorld. There's also a concept graphic of the display dome on the company's homepage.
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We already have this technology.
It's called girls.. and my god, have you seen the resolution?! Wooooooohhhh says Neo.
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... Many Bothans died to bring us this information. :)
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Just a quick note from one of the founders of the 3-D display firm.
Seems to be some confusion about the resolution of the device we're working on. The 3-D display creates imagery by projecting onto a rotating screen; it projects (at least) 200 2-D images, each of a resolution of approx. 768 x 768. Persistence of vision fuses all of these "slices" into a 3-D image.
Note that the images are stacked radially, like slicing a pizza - not linearly, like a deck of cards.
I hope you enjoy the site... We're working hard over here to have something ready for demonstration; we'll try to put actual photographs on the web some day soon.
Gregg Favalora