Slashdot Mirror
3-Dimensional Holographic Projector
NO WAY! writes: "Wired has a story about Dimensonal Media's demonstration of a holographic projection system at this year's Comdex. Apparently the damn thing can project 3-d videos or create a live projection of an object as it goes. This sounds unbelievable -- has anyone else heard of this? Check out the article." It does sound unbelievable, but then, so does the idea of thousands of tiny nanoprobes hidden in our food.
I've used a telephone, and video telephone technologies have been around for decades. It has been a couple of years since my last teleconference.
Look who owns the company... http://www.3dmedia.com about us->executives there's always a fucking catch..
1) you have to have the actual object inside the device that projects it ."
2) its inc. yet i cant seem to buy stock in them
3) their site just screams "we did it! we made some awesome new technology! when its just a bunch of magician tricks with mirrors that they've been doing for some time now
4) this statement: "To further extend the inherent advantages of 3D images, Dimensional Media(tm) can add a tactile force feedback interface to the Hypercube 3D Display(tm) This feature allows the user to not only see 3D images but to touch and feel them as though they were real objects. This quantum leap in capability can be used to . .
basically you have to hold something to feel the feedback, in the medical example its a pair of forceps, wheres the "quantum leap" here? its just VR with the old volumetric display we've heard about since something like july with force-feedback forceps, nothing new to see here, just a few technologies coming together under the name "Dimensional Media(tm)" and then they boast that its "radical" and "new"
i started out awed, but in the end i was upset at how stupid it is, they made it out to be something entirely new.
I remember seeing one of these at OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science & Industry). They used a coin or a screw or something.
The image looked really good from certain angles (coin floating in midair), looked kind of distorted & hurt your eyes a bit (felt like they were crossing) from other angles, and if you actually looked into the hole in the top mirror, the resulting reflections REALLY hurt your eyes...
(I saw this about 20 years ago, when I was a just a little squirt, but have some good memories of it.)
These Dimensional Media guys are being real quiet about their technology, but from the vague details I've been able to synthesize from the various articles floating around the net, it sure sounds like they're using these kinds of optical tricks to create their "volumetric displays", although they're using larger objects than a coin and bolt, and the reviews seem to be impressed with the clarity of the objects, so they've probably improved the optics a lot somehow.
As far as their dynamic displays were concerned, it sounded like they had a 12-plane video source which they used to create a 3D image using their optical techniques.
First invent tractor and pusher beams.
Something like television?
Big versions of this are cool, but they're inherently big. The geometry of the thing requires a much bigger mirror than the size of the image projected.
This has been discussed before on Slashdot. Editors, you've got to research your own backfiles more. Just because Wired doesn't know anything about technology doesn't mean Slashdot shouldn't.
- The demonstrations on Dimensional Media's site are Flash presentations, or computer generated simulations of their proported computer generated recreations. Why no real video of the device in action?
- Under R&D is just more PR hype and broadcast clips from such internationally renowned scientific authorities as Fox TV and ABC News, and nothing else. The Fox clip makes no reference to Dimensional Media or visualization technology at all, but does have a couple of nice inserts from Star Wars and Robocop. Why no technical information about the device? No patents? No references to scientific papers?
- For a person to see anything, light has to reach the eye. An object must radiate or reflect/re-radiate it. Point a flashlight away in a vacuum and you won't see the beam since the physical objects (air, dust, water vapour) necessary to re-direct the light back towards your eyes are lacking. So how does DM's device point light into mid-air and have it form an image?
I'm not waiting for the IPO.
Sounds like a souped up version of those mirrored sphere-ish (shaped more like two pudding dishes placed on top of each other - top one inverted) things that they sell in magic shops.
Right.
And it's NOT a hologram. (Take it from someone who worked under Leith.)
A hologram is an interference pattern, in density or phase, that constructs a wavefront by diffraction. This is NOT that.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I was at an ILT conference and someone mentioned that trials had been conducted in the US to use holographic projection to allow virtual lectures.
The idea being that lecturers would be able to speak from remote locations as if they were physically in the lecture theatre or could present simultaneous lectures in different locations.
Its sounds like a useful aid to distance learning in instances where a lecture is more suitable than say just using web based learning materials.
For lectures and traditional CMC discussions it sounds ideal
Using the trick isn't bad (I'm all for using "old" technology that still blows people's socks off :), but hiding the technology, hyping it up as something incredibly new & sophisticated (and, if some of the news reports can be believed, filing patents based on the technology), that's kind of annoying.
That doesn't mean that I wouldn't enjoy seeing a bunch of these displays in the local grocery store. The technology may be old, but I still enjoyed the effect.
Dimensional Media
22 W. 19th St., 2nd Fl.
New York, NY 10011 USA
http://www.3dmedia.com/ phone: 212-620-4100
e-mail: info@3dmedia.com
What will set Dimensional Media, and a company in Norway which I know the founder of that is working on a similar but improved project, apart is whether or not they can make these things robust, stable, cheap, and popular enough for them to take off. Integration with an IR grid for detection of objects (like fingers) entering the area for 3D UI's is, however, a pretty nice addition...
;-)
Other companies have tried mirror-and-lens based holographic projectors before - I've even played a video game console, in an arcade, which used a similar system - though it only supported 180 degrees of viewpoint (the article says the DM system supports "full look around" which I will consider a claim that it does 360 degree views)
Their plans to use this with NMR data and, particularly medical, volumetric rendering data is a good plan. I want to be able to go to a doctor's and watch my brain fully modeled in 3D, with real-time display of neural activity... can I bring popcorn?
It's not that unbelievable, but if the resolution is as good as they claim, and it finally takes off commercially, then there are a lot of cool medical, 3D user interface, gaming, and, of course, military applications (hey, have the autonomous helicopter robot mentioned today send back 3D projections of the disaster / battle site to its home base...)
o/~ we are pissed, we are pissed, we have to resist... o/~ - ec8or
Cruise over to Dimensional Media's website and check out the HyperCube 3D monitor in the R&D tab (no pics, unfortunately). The best quote from the description: "can add a tactile force feedback interface." You will actually be able to roughly feel the object as well! The applications for this kind of tech are endless, from surgery to 3D modeling to CAD to entertainment (gotta feed the pornhounds), etc. I'd say this isn't even possible yet, except for the fact that hundreds have seen it in person at Comdex. Love to know what their products go for, even though I'll never actually be able to afford them. I just can't help but imagine what computing will be like in 20 years (maybe even sooner!) when these babies are commonplace and operating systems are designed in 3D; you'll grab a file and drop it in a folder, literally! :)
Deo
Funny thing is, it looks like somebody took a Volkswagen Passat toy and mounted it on a motor shaft. If you pause the video about 1/8 of the way through the movie, you can see the support holding the "hologram" up.
Again, you need to understand how the technology works. The real Passat toy *is* being held up by the motor shaft. However, the real car is INSIDE the machine, and the mirrors are projecting it's image to where the people are watching. You seem to think this is a computer generated image. This isn't Star Trek. It's a real object being projected a few feet away. Do you expect the real Car toy to be suspended in midair? Something has to hold it up.
Also, look at the car about 3/5 of the way through the video when then spokesman is supposed to be waving his hands through the car. He is actually casting a shadow on the car, which again leads one to believe there's something funny going on here.
Take a closer look. Yes, he is casting a shadow on the car. The lights above are also reflecting off the car. The car itself casts a shadow. Why? Because the *real* car is in full view of the lights! If you look at his shadow when it passes over the car, it doesn't line up. His fingers appear in the middle of where his palm should be, etc.
Kind of hard to believe that Wired would be duped by something like this.
Wired wasn't "duped" by "this". They were at Comdex. They saw the machine in person. They didn't watch a video and write an entire article on it. *CLUE*
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
OK, I couldn't see the support clearly. However, what I did see was not just the shadows, but the shadows moving _in the opposite direction_ to the hand moving. That means that the shadows are falling onto something solid, and that the image we are seeing is the virtual image of that solid thing. _Exactly_ like those coin/mirror things in magic shops.
Their own video has convinced me of its fakeness.
I guess all that they really want is funding, and then they'll do a runner with the money...
Yes I'm a fscking cynic.
FatPhil
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Certainly this technique frees you from viewing
an image depicted on a flat window or screen. However a better form of 3D shows different views from different viewpoints, i.e. objects behind obscuring objects. Holograms and fresnel displays have this latter property.
Nothing precludes one of these screenless displays updated dynamically depending on the position of the viewer.
Here is a link to one of those gadgets. The images of the devices at COMDEX bear a resemblance to it, except for the video screen device.
Yeah, this is _seriously_ old news on the display front. Whilst it's a funky trick, the optics are nothing new. It doesn't even look like they've improved it from the basic "hovering coin" trick costing $1 in a toy shop - the object being projected is just concealed in the base. The buttons that you press will actually exist, full-size, in the base.
If they ever got this to work with electronic displays then I'd be impressed. But as it is, all they've done is taken a very old bit of optics and added a laser grid to detect your finger breaking a beam. If you've never seen this done b4, you'll think it's impressive. But if you've ever been to a school science display, chances are you've seen this.
So you're not going to have a true 3-D display anytime soon. What they're demonstrating has no use at all for displaying from a computer, since all it can do is project an image of an existing solid object. Sorry.
Grab.
It is still unclear whether it is feasable to compute holograms in real time. It might be that this system is limited to simulcasting live content only -- ie it may only be able to record and replay, not create content from scratch.
The problem is that holograms are photographs of the interference patterns of two in-phase beams reflecting off an object. You project by illumiating the developed film with similar light.
Now, replace the film with a ccd and the developed film with a high-resolution lcd, and we can see how to transmit them digitally.
However, it is likely a bear of a job simluating the light rays needed to create the interference. You'd need to simulate a large subset of all the light beams in the system -- this would make ray tracing seem easy.
So the specialised hardware you need to quickly perform these massive calculations would be completely different from your video card (indeed, are more likely to be called ASCI blue or whatever).
As noted, the 360 device appears to use the "dual parabolic mirror" trick, to display the virtual image.
The other devices, though (based on the models shown in the flash anims), seem to use something different.
What that could be is up to speculation - but I think they may use some form of either a parabolic lens trick (I remember a simple spring/shake hands with yourself display @ the Exploritorium in SF), or possibly using a fresnel lens.
Sometimes, when you look at a fresnel lens at an angle, objects can appear to "float" above it. I wish I had one of my page magnifiers handy, I would play with it - to see if I could recreate the effect.
I would imaging one of those, plus a small 14-15 inch monitor housed appropriately, could generate the effect...
I support the EFF - do you?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
___________
/___________\
\___________/
inside it is a coin and the inside surface is a mirror. There is a lense at the top and when you look at it from a certain angle, it looks like the coin is on top of the thing and not inside it. Sound familiar? Anybody know how these things work?