Slashdot Mirror
Star Wars-like Holograms
jeffy124 writes: "Business 2.0 has an article up about Ford's use of holograms during vehicle development. It's almost exactly like that scene in the original Star Wars where R2D2 ran a movie of Princess Leia saying 'Help me Obi Wan.' Basically, Ford uses the system during development to get a look at the car and various parts without needing to construct a full prototype. The image is a 3-D projection and hovers just above the floor, allowing the user to walk around the 'vehicle,' getting a look at it from all angles. I can picture the pr0n jokes now!"
anyone has a link to a picture? I mean isnt the news that it looks like starwars? I would like to see it then...
that Ford really sucks, it's an awesome technology.
Utinam logica falsa tuam philosophiam totam suffodiant!
The title "Are Holograms Finally for Real?" is a little misleading. Holograms have been around for a long time, it's just holographic image being projected that is a new thing. PBS had a nice show a while back about the emerging tech and how it will effect us.
Aw, you mean that last sentence prevents me from making an actual witty remark about pr0n? ...Well, actually, few remarks about pr0n are funny.
Anyway, with holograms that show car designs out in 2002, I wonder how long it'll take until we hit a button and watch a news channel hologram on the dining room table during dinner.
... can we classify ghosts as 'legasy systems' now?
"You laugh at me because I am different. I laugh at you because you're all the same." --Vick Imbornoni
The article says nothing of the sort. The article says that the hologram is still captured on a 2D piece of film. All that's different is that the image is computer-generated rather than from light shining off a physical 3D object. The only mention of Star Wars in the article is as an analogy.
"that not only rendered the T-bird in perfect 3-D but also provided different views as observers moved around it, as if it were really there."
Yeah, I got the same feeling from their ANNOYING POPUP.
or would that be comdii? :)
Anyway, a few years ago there was supposedly a company that "stole the show" with they three dimensional holographic projectors. None of the various news sites had pictures, and I don't watch much tv so I don't know if they had video... but one of the reps for the company said that these were reasonably priced and that you'd be seeing them in malls across the US by year end. Obviously, that never happened at least not in Seattle.
Slightly OT... but oh well.
sig.
It's almost exactly like that scene in the original Star Wars where R2D2 ran a movie of Princess Leia saying 'Help me Obi Wan.'
Not really. It's a sheet of film, like the holograms you get on Windows CDs or ones you buy at the toy store. The difference is it's bigger, a lot better quality, and they can create it from a rendered (rather than real) object.
Contrary to what the Slashdot description implies, there's no real-time anything involved here.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
Hey! Look what I can do!! *slap slap* Never fails to raise a smile :)
This technique is a way to quickly make a hologram, on film. You can develop the film and view the hologram.
What's cool is that they have figured out how to use an LCD screen to computer-generate the 3D holograms. Until now, to make a hologram, you needed a physical object to work from.
I'd be interested to know how long it takes to make one of these holograms. If they could get their equipment fast enough to make, say, 24 holograms per second, perhaps they could leave out the film part and just generate moving holograms in realtime. I suspect it's a lot slower than that right now.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
I can see 3d images with my trusty red and blue paper glasses!
-dk
Actually I was thinking about 4D, as in hypercubes, and trying to wrap my mind around the idea of what it would be like for someone in the 3 dimensional world to suddenly be transported to a 4 dimensional world. I wondered if the perceptions that person would have would be of the fourth spatial dimension or merely three dimensional representations of the fourth dimension.
Ford's plan to use three dimensional imaging to showcase cars is much like a thought I had today regarding the layout of my desk. I don't have one of those flat desks that are so common with executives. Rather, I have a few shelves and cubby holes to hold my stuff. I was trying to think of a way to organize all of it without actually pulling everything out of its place, and at that point I thought about modeling it on the computer using a CAD program. Unfortunately, I don't have one of those here at work and no one is likely to spring for one either, so I have to do it the old fashioned way with pen and paper.
That's when it hit me. Why *isn't* there a three dimensional modeling program that can help lay out desktops? People rearrange their desktops all the time, whether to clean them off or to simply change the scenery. I didn't want to duplicate any effort that may have already gone into this so I submitted the question to Ask Slashdot, but apparently it's not edgy enough or something.
Can anyone help me? Is there a 3 dimensional modeling tool for laying out desktops?
I have been pwned because my
Hey, thanks a lot for posting a mirror to this! We know how often huge sites like business2.com get slashdotted, especially those with AOL/TW backing.
Do me a favor, the next time there's a story on, say, cnn.com or msnbc.com, please mirror it; those sites just don't have the bandwidth to last more than a few clicks!
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
In other words, I'll believe it when I see it. Business 2.0 should learn that there is no version in business, you just listen to your customers and fulfill their needs to get compensated. The rules of biz haven't changed but my expectations have and me wants some pics already!
They probably just put the real thing there with a fence around it and shined some snazzy projectors on it and said "oooooh!".
"Dude, let's get stoned and stare at the hologram!" =)
This is often the way the economy works: (1)Company creates a new technology. (2) Rich people immediately find a flippant/sketchy use for it. (3)Company makes money from them, uses it to refine their technology. (4) Technology eventually gets better and cheaper to produce. It becomes ubiquitous.
Case in point, the camcorder. Rich/sketchy people spend thousands on them to create homemade porn and artsy black and white existential movies. Tech. improves, it gets cheaper, and now a decent camcorder is in the $150 range.
--All your stolen base are belong to Rickey Henderson
You definitely need something to project a hologram on to. It doesn't just work with thin air. (Air's invisible, remember?)
The only solution for a real walkaround 3D hologram I could think of would be some kind of plexiglas bubble filled with smoke of something other half translucent (to let the lasers through)/half "lightable" (to catch the light and reflect it for the eyes).
Am I making sense or what?
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Anwyay, before we try to make 3D representations of objects in the air we should try to make them in 2D reliably. We had to learn to walk before we ran, now didn't we?
Hey, I posted it so that people don't have to get annoyed with pop-ups and other crap from that site. Since it's a flat text article (no pics, no links to speak of) it works pretty well.
Don't like it? Don't read it. Move your eyes down the page. Move along now, nothing to see here...
... is closer to those cars you get in your box of cereal where you tilt the card left and right and the picture animates.
Go technology!
I'm afraid not. The image does not move and you can't walk very far around it. Where the reflected beam and the reference beam interfere, you get the same distribution of light you might get off the original 3-D object. However, the image only extends to the edge of the holographic plate. Wander around to the front of the car and it disappears. Go around to the other side of where the car ought to be, and it stays gone, because there is nothing solid bouncing the light back.
Is this a real bit of kit, and if so, why don't they show a photograph of it?
Imagine what this could do if somebody figures out how to create a holographic live webcam - and then couples it with cyberdildonics....
Wanted: One rich investor to pay me for developing it. A lot of hot uninhibited girls who are not morally opposed to being monetarilly exploited.
Come join my soon to exist, dynamic company as we strive to bring the world the ultimate in relationship ruination.
"Semper in excretum set alta variant"
I remember at the Disneyland "Innoventions" thing, Silicon Graphics had this face scanner that would map someone's face into a 3-D object onscreen, and then manipulate it and whatever. While relatively old technology, not only could the new holographic methods be used to display nonphysical prototypes, it could also be used in conjunction with an object scanner to communicate dimensions and depth of existing objects in a more real form from a great distance.
Zebra Imaging is the company behind it all. Might be slashdotted already...
(Score:5, Not Funny)
In this case it was a girl in her underwear squirming out of her panties.
...All funded by government money and admission fees.
Not that I minded, of course.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
I think the question on all of our minds is this: Can we apply this technology to Natalie Portman?
I don't I would've used "picture" as the verb there...
Don't like it? Don't read it.
It would be nice if it were that simple, but eventually people like you are going to piss off enough of the wrong people and Slashdot is going to be sued yet again for copyright infringement. It's not like LNUX is really rolling in money, those lawyers are costly to retain.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Actually, the most intresting thing in the whole article is the picture at the end... it shows how the hologram is generated
.sigh
"Stay on target. Stay on target!"
Fair point. Lawyers suck. But if this is the case (there is a legal issue in posting whole articles), why isn't a post metamoderated down to hell?
Of course i'd like to have one..And development of visualization technologies like these are important. However, I have to ask myself...if I were the President of Ford, why bother with such a thing?
The scenario they relate in the article is one where automotive designers and engineers can "walk around" a theorhetical car, as opposed to fabricating a prototype. Sure, prototypes are expensive, but on the other hand, I'd be hard pressed to justify spending what probably amounts to millions of dollars on a holographic setup that could be duplicated with a handful of $100 pairs of polarized stereo LCD goggles. The crux of the problem seems to me to be more of a software one, rather than a hardware one. Do you really need to have a room-sized holographic projection system? Couldn't you accomplish the same effect with a sufficiently advanced pair of goggles with the right software?
The article fails to adequately address why its a necessary technology... only that its whiz-bang neato and reminds the author of R2D2.
Bowie J. Poag
Jokes about porn aside, the thing that'll bring holographic TV and so on to your living room will be the porn industry.
They seem to have been behind most other home-entertainment systems recently, and so, let's hope the porn industry DOES get interested in this.
Score:-1, Funny
sorry, it had to be said
No popups on my screen.
If you're using IE, you have no right to bitch about popups.
They're using state-of-the art hologram technology to visualize, um, an internal combustion fossil fuel-burning car. Ain't entrenchment a blast?
Next, we'll be using sophisticated CAD simulations to design the latest generation of high-performance vehicles.
- cult-like devotion to Linux. reserve your fanaticism for a church, not a kernel.
Funny you mention the word "cult."
That's how I see church.
Heh, this is silly.... I can already think of possible abuse (don't click here) [alltheweb.com]
arg, p0rn jokes??? Tiz not a joke!
--should have posted anonymously--
Cool aspects: instead of needing a physical object to make a hologram you can now use a transparent LCD screen. You can also make your hologram any size you want because instead of a single exposed but if film the hologram is made from little 2"x2" tiles.
Misleading aspects of the story: This is not Star Wars technology come to life. Neither Princess Leia nor Queen Amidala will be hovering in mid-air begging someone for help. There's no motion involved in these holograms unless successive tiles have an animated image. The only way you'll get animation of any sort is the same way you get it out of the baseball cards printed with the plastic ribbing. Each viewing angle gives you a different instance frame. These images do not hover in mid-air either, their focal point is behind the surface of the view window.
The sort of volumetric projection in Star Wars is not possible without some super fancy technology to bend light rays once they hit a certain point in space. You need something for the photons to hit and change direction in, like glass. The people at Dimensional Media (www.3dmedia.com) have a system like this. They take a bunch of 2D slices and project them at high speed onto a piece of glass. Each of the 20 or so slices they use is a slightly different perspective on the 3D image. These are run through a beam splitter and projected onto a set of mirrors that projects onto a glass plate. The image seems to float behind the glass plate and as you move from side to side you're seeing one of the slightly different perspective slices. It is cool technology that might be getting somewhere because DMA has won a couple awards for their technology and got a research grant from somebody in January. I don't work for them or anything I've just run across lots of articles about them in the past 6 years and looked into their technology when I began to research building a home made volumetric projection system. While Zebra Imaging has a cool tech for static holograms I'm much more interested in realtime volumetric projection. My interest in holography lasted about as long as the power supply for my HeNe laser.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
You mean moderated, not metamoderated, right?
It probably will, as will this thread (as Offtopic), which is why I'm being anonymous. Anyhow.
This technology can be used to picture pr0n jokes?
why isn't a post metamoderated down to hell?
Because a metamod is when a moderated comment is further moderated for fairness.
Here is a helpful sugestion for posting on Slashdot.
A. Read
B. (important) Think
C. Re-read (because looking stupid hurts ones D. Decide whether posting is worth it.
E. Post.
Hehe - aside from the initial shock, the best bit is the stunned silence at the end.
This has been in the works since December of 2000.
Google-returned links to (hologram) images are Here and here.
-Berj
Since it's a flat text article (no pics, no links to speak of
The picture at the end contains a lot of info. sorry you missed it.
next time it is required please create a mirror. or link to the google cache.
They have already used systems like CAD-CAM and other 3D modeling programs to do the same thing on a computer screen. Using the arrow keys you could rotate the image around, zoom in or out, and of course, modify it as you liked. The advantage of using a hologram is limited here. A better useage would be a holographic projection of a patients body in the hospital, allowing doctors to watch the effects of their work as they go along.
Exactly. My post was moderated. I was suggesting that this (moderated) post should be further moderated (metamoderated) if there is a legal issue involved, as one poster claimed.
This is my point. I thought about it. I read it again. It still made sense.
And now the original post has been modded down to -1. Damn my precious karma!
i dont think you understand how this works, perhaps you should not use the keyboard thingy part of your computer so much.
FORD: F*cked Over, Rebuilt DeathStar... I get it... I finally get it!
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
From further down in the artile:
"Forget about Princess Lela and 3-D videoconferencing."
Maye they were thinking of Leela from Futurama...
What post? The one you're carrying inside your rusty innards!
Here is a competitors site with video: litiholo gallery
Should be possible to find more here
-Kraft
Live and let live
Oh I don't know:
/. FAQ.
"Metamoderation is a second layer of moderation. It seeks to address the issue of unfair moderators by letting "metamoderators" (any logged-in Slashdotter) "rate the rating" of ten randomly selected comment posts. The metamoderator decides if the moderator's rating was fair, unfair, or neither." This is from the
An example. I post an article. Some people mod it up. This moderation is incorrect, because doing this can be a legally thorny issue. Therefore some metamoderators should mod it back down. Does that make sense? Of course, other moderators could mod it back down again, but that does not change the fact that the original post was modded incorrectly to start with.
As for using my keyboard "thingy", at least I know how to use capital letters. And punctuation.
fantastic... I'm stunned! ...
However, after turning off one of my lights, a large hologram was illuminated, and it looked spectacular!
Berto
3D and porn, why? Most porn lacks depth.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
There is a program that gives you a 3D desktop in windows. It's called "3DTop" and you can get it here:
http://www.3dtop.com/
There is also a 3D program to view websites with, allowing you to have walls of browsers in a VR room, called Buzz3d and you can find that here:
http://www.buzz3d.com/
I'd make these into links but since I can't use the [url] [/url] deal and make it work, and since the people who run slashdot don't seem to find it necessary to have any help on the subject of message formatting, or even a damned button to do it for you, I guess you'll just have to copy and paste.
For those interested in true volumetric displays, this is a nice overview of the current state.
[TMB]
I somehow missed reading the middle paragraph of your post and thought you were talking about the windows desktop. Anyhow, the programs are still neat and it seems like you do have some time on your hands, so check it out.
Are Holograms Finally for Real?
By: David H. Freedman
Issue: July 2002
This staple of sci-fi is starting to live up to its billing, and its potential in the workplace is anything but an illusion.
In the months leading up to the debut of the new Ford Thunderbird last fall, the car's four-person design crew was asked to show its most recent tweaks to company executives. So it did what any auto-design team does: It hauled its latest prototype out to the center of a conference room for a group "walkaround." There, managers cooed over the slick coupe's rakish lines from every imaginable angle.
But "prototype," in this case, might be the biggest understatement in automotive history. What the designers and executives were in fact viewing was a computer-generated hologram -- hovering slightly off the floor -- that not only rendered the T-bird in perfect 3-D but also provided different views as observers moved around it, as if it were really there.
Such startlingly lifelike projections are so compelling a technology -- as we saw when R2-D2 emitted his "Help me, Obi-Wan" hologram of Princess Leia 25 years ago in the original Star Wars -- that it's difficult to imagine a future in which they're not ubiquitous. It's the present that's the problem. Until now, holograms have been little more than second-rate gimmicks, thanks to the fact that holographically creating anything more than small, washed-out images has proved exceedingly expensive and time-consuming. But that's about to change. Zebra Imaging, a six-year-old startup in Austin that created the Thunderbird holograms (as well as another for the P2000, one of Ford's experimental hydrogen-powered vehicles), is but one of several companies refining new techniques for producing life-size holograms on the fly, using both real and computer-generated images.
In conventional holography, whose uses to date have been limited to things like novelty art and anticounterfeit decals on CD jewel cases, a laser beam is split in two, with one section shining directly at a large sheet of film and the other bouncing off the object in question before being rejoined with the first. On the film, the overlapping beams etch patterns that contain enough information to render the entire image as seen from different angles. When you look at the developed film, each of your eyes sees a slightly different view of the image, providing the flawless 3-D illusion, and walking or moving your head to the side offers a side view, exactly as it would if the object were real.
Zebra's new technique is similar but uses a digital image in place of the physical object. Its computers convert a standard graphics file into a pattern displayed on a large, translucent LCD screen. A laser then fires three different-colored beams through the screen. When the beams converge and hit a special film that can be quickly developed with ultraviolet light and heat, the image emerges in startlingly realistic 3-D detail.
Such breakthroughs portend a wide array of new business applications, at least if Zebra's ever-expanding client roster is any indication. Customers include Boeing (BA), Exxon (XOM), and Ford (F), not to mention the Bob Marley Museum in Kingston, Jamaica, which recently bought a life-size hologram of the legendary reggae king. Mark Holzbach, the company's co-founder and chief technical officer, ticks off a handful of projects already in the works: holograms for product design (à la the Thunderbird), oil and gas exploration (modeling rock layers and fissures a mile below ground), jetliner navigation (making mountains visible through clouds), and even advertising (festooning brochures, billboards, and store windows with eye-popping 3-D imagery).
Alton Parrish, an analyst at technology consulting firm Business Communications in Norwalk, Conn., predicts that design applications alone will create a $100 million market for the sort of holograms Zebra can now produce, and that the overall market for high-quality holography will eventually approach $1 billion. "If the manufacturing design industry can get access to high-quality, fast holographic imaging," he says, "it's likely to adopt the technology." That's not as big an understatement as calling Zebra's T-bird a prototype, perhaps, but it's an understatement nonetheless.
-- No Comment
Why didn't they put a photo of the hologram - or any hologram generated by this system - in the article? talk about underwhelming: for all we know it could look utterly shit and useless, and they've just hyped it up.
"No."
The article is worthless - they wrote a page of words on the basis that some guys down at Ford are printing "holograms" (ie the decal type silver foil things) from CGI instead of images captured by bouncing light off real objects. Just what is their point? Exactly? Alternative titles for the article include:-
"Man does exactly the same thing with holograms as usual"
"No change on the holgram front"
Or as Christopher Lloyd says in Star Trek III:-
"Nothing happening here!, Kruge out!".
Truly, this is not the article you are looking for - move along.
Several years ago I went to a store in Hong Kong that sold high-end holograms. I'm pretty sure I saw a tube-shaped film that you could walk completely around. These type of holograms can theoretically be made on any shape of film (flat, curved, tubular, etc.) The only problem is exposing the entire surface of the object to the two portions of the split laser beam.
For what it's worth, I messed around with holograms in high school. My physics teacher (Tommy Toor, Lyman High School) let me take home the lab's hologram kit, including the laser! How cool is that! (This was 1984...they didn't have laser pointers back then, at least not cheap ones; this laser was about the size of an extra large box of tin foil.) Anyway, you could make two types of holograms: reflection and transmission.
The reflection holograms were the low-quality types you see on credit cards and cd cases. They were pretty flat, but you could view them in ordinary light.
The transmission holograms were much more dramatic. You had to view them through a piece of transparent film illuminated by laser from behind. The object would appear to be beyond the film, rather than on the surface. These are the types that you see in museums and some high-end stores (don't know if they've come up with a way to view them without the laser?) Most of us have seen how you can move from side to side and get a different view as if the object was really there, even to the extent of "unmasking" hidden contours as you move. But a little known fact is that you can cut up the film and each piece still contains the image. Think of covering up different parts of a window: you can still see an object placed outside, but you have to position yourself in a different place to see it. Same with a transmission hologram. If you cut the film in quarters and give them to your friends, they could each see the object. One would have to look down and to the left, one looks down and to the right, etc. Very cool.
Anyway, the technology described in the article sounds like high-quality, quickly produced transmission holograms. Star Wars-style holograms will require some sort of 3-D medium as discussed above.
Evil is the money of root.
Oh for pete's sake. Read what I said.
/. a legal problem (as a previous poster stated), not only should the post be modded down but ANY MODERATORS WHO MODDED IT UP SHOULD ALSO BE PENALIZED. This stops people from posting things that could cause /. a problem. I've been on here for a while and I've constantly seen articles posted as text. If it is wrong, not only the original poster but the moderators who constantly mod things up need to be shown the errors of their ways.
I am trying to say that if an article is posted, and that this could cause
This is my point. Maybe I didn't make that clear in my original post (I should drink more coffee), but I thought I made it clear last post.
Sigh.
... that if I expose my computer to six holograms of Michael York's head the computer will explode?
Miko O'Sullivan
perhaps this is off-topic, but as a kid I used to visit my grandfather when he worked at RCA in Princeton, this was circa 1980. He'd take me around to all of his scientist buddies and show me the cool stuff they were working on. I remember big lasers (whoa), lots of weird laser-disc storage media, primitive green pixel-ly flat televisions, and they also had a short holgraphic film loop. It was tiny, maybe six inches tall, and it was a silvery image of guys playing football that could be viewed from several angles. I hadn't heard of anybody whipping them out again until now. Having been 9 at the time I had no idea how it worked. This was the last thing I'd witnessed as a child that I hadn't yet seen as an adult.
This is pretty cool, but the real breakthrough in product design technology is stereolithography. A way of making real object by using layered exposure of photopolimers to laser light, extreemly cool and (now) pretty expensive. It allows to make true to life models extreemly fast.
there is some info here - a commercial site.
How long should be wait until we can see one of this in a show or Disney park?
I will pay to be in front of one of this babies
Get my e-mail after a captcha test in: http://tinymailt
it's just an enhanced version of the dvd's multiangle...but with all in ugly blue
--fetch daddy's blue fright wig, i must be handsome when i release my rage
Okay, I admit I haven't read the article. (Whaddya expect? I just rolled out of bed a few minutes ago, and I'm only surfing Slashdot right now to avoid going to work.)
;-)
Nevertheless, I'm having a hard time understanding why this kind of hologram would be more useful than, say, a VR wall or room? I've seen some of SGI's demos of 3D visualization technology using Onyxes or Octanes, projectors, and stereo glasses. Granted, those images aren't truly volumetric, so you can't put your finger into them or anything... but the same is true of these holograms we're talking about. They only appear to be volumetric.
And a VR environment like that has the benefit of being in full color, with full interactive animation and whatnot. You can use the wireless mouse thingy to "grab" the model and rotate it on any axis, with frame rates from 120 all the way down to a few per second, depending on the complexity and the oomph behind your computer system. Sounds a lot cooler and more useful than a static hologram image to me.
I dunno. I guess I'm just not as dazzled by the word "hologram" as I was when I was seven.
According to Zebra Imaging's web site, the images do appear in front of the film, hovering in mid air.
-- Out of cheese error! Redo from start.
"Hump me Obi Wan, you're my only hope!"
what was that old arcade game that was under a bubble and looked 3D? Can't remember the name of it, but you were a cowboy traveling though time... look pretty good to me, but might just be the nastalga :p
But go and do your assignment in a honest way, ok?
Hasn't anyone seen a parabolic mirror illusion before? It's probably decades old tech and still more effective...
p ri ng.html
http://www.exploratorium.edu/snacks/touch_the_s
I don't know if anyone else noticed but the company who did the little image explaining how it worked was called XPLANE.
Now in the spirit of capitalism (not allowing this XPLANE company get a monopoly on cheezy diagrams) and the tradition of Riki Ricardo of "I Love Lucy", I propose its time some of us get together and start our own company named SPLANE. Our motto could be that "We got some SPLANE'n to do" or maybe just "Bobaloo".
Truly a classic. Thanks for the early morning Wednesday laugh... And yes, the stunned silence at the end is worth the time of the download
A karma point to whoever can name the story I am referring to :-)
Need a Linux consultant in New Orleans?
I'll bet you love to explain your jokes too. Please do not reply to this message, try to show a little restraint eh?
Goatse gay porn link.
Nice way of expanding the link out so you don't see it in the bar.
Information Week recently ran a piece on the major IT transition at General Motors. While not using this kind of hologram technology, they are making good use of projected 3-D models combined with VR headsets.
Here's a little more detail on the system and how to use it to frighten children. (And no, it doesn't involve 3-D displays of Pontiac Azteks....) If you read this article, note the slip of the car name...the article says it's "Solaris", when it it's actually "Solstice"
Yeah. It sure would be nice if a new physical property of the universe was discovered that allowed us to somehow bend light in mid-air, without using a physical surface.
This code gets you this: Click on this link
You can also use other HTML formatting tags in your posts.
What? Is this technology so advanced that no one knows if they should orient their camera vertically or horizontally? Why won't anyone take a fucking picture of this wonderful crap? Yes, I know a picture is 2-D. I want to see many pictures, from different angles, that demonstrate how the image is projected from different view points. I'm surprised 50% of the comments aren't flames directed at Ford for the use of vaporware propaganda. Call me Joshua.
and she only has one
I invested in a company called Entertainment Arts after they announced just recently that they are in a partneship to use holography technology for gaming and entertainment. I think this is a viable product for the future but I have little understanding of where the industry is at right now. The company they are partnered with is called ATL corporation?
Here's a clip from ETAI 's press release on ATL:
ATL's proprietary holographic technology projects live, real-time, full color, 3-D images out from the display unit into a region of space between the observer and the unit. The image moves in an empty space to the unit and can be viewed by any number of people. A high resolution image can be projected in reduced scale onto a table/desktop or life-sized onto a stage. The image source can be computer-generated animations, 3-D scans of real objects or live and/or produced video feed of actual people and events.
Anyone have any more information on any of this?
Zebra imaging looks very impressive!
Thanks!
------------------------------------ Step into my Office... WhY? Cuz your %$#$ing Fired...
...is a musical group that sang The Age of Aquarius!
Gah. I'm at work, you dink. That sort of crap can get me canned! Do you know how hard it is to get a job these days?
Grrr.
Arthur Hansen
No! It's a *SIG*. Keep the Special Interest Groups away! (Con joke!)
BMW has been doing this for years. Nothing new here.
why did I think they were talking about Han Solo having a system to look at car prototypes. And why should he need a car anyways, he's got a perfectly good YT-1300 Light Freighter.
Sipping on Jolt and Dew. Laid back. With my mind of my cubicle and my cubicle on my mind.
VR systems (both immersive HMD systems as well as "CAVE" type displays) are good for "walkthroughs", "walkarounds", even "testing" (such as for ergonomic placement of controls, or viewing angles from seats, etc) - but neither technology (as of yet) allows for "real size" views.
Most VR systems do NOT represent the objects in a one-to-one unit basis - most of the time the virtual world is scaled or distorted in some manner. This is normally because of the viewing system used - with an HMD, if the objects were represented at real scale and perspective, things would look slightly odd (especially in the higher-res, low FOV HMDs). CAVEs tend to distort things as well to fit the projection screens and minimize the distortions at the wall joining edges. Lower-res, high FOV HMDs can't be used, because resolution is lost, and thus accuracy for measurement. HMDs do not allow for real rulers, only virtual ones. CAVEs allow for real rulers, but if the image is slightly distorted, it is useless for engineers. Another thing against HMDs and CAVEs is "simulator sickness"...
I am not saying that either technology is completely useless - there are aspects that make both appealing for engineering use, but prototype display for design reconfiguration probably isn't one of them. I also think that the accuracy could be preserved, but it would be expensive. I think at some point the tech will come down in price to allow this.
However, this hologram technology allows for the fast "duplication" of a CAD/CAM drawing (which may or may not be represented in real size on a monitor) into a medium that allows the engineers (and non-engineers!) to view at real size, as well as (possibly) take real size measurements using real measuring equipment. The hologram in this case is a real size volumetric image of a virtual design. It is probably the fastest method of rapid prototyping for large scale objects that we will have for a while.
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
It seems that our obsession for progressive technology is vested more in transportation than in novel media.
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A few points.
1. you can't walk around a reflection hologram.
2. the viewing angles of reflection holograms are a little limited and since the color of an image (and it's position, slightly) will vary with the angle between the light source and the viewer, you need a point light source.
3. The image is harder to make than the drawing implied, they no doubt had to have apparatus that physically scanned the image source (and possibley light source) over the film to print on it.
Rocky J. Squirrel
Sounds like what they used in Logan's Run
The images moved too.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
Not true, for a number of years there have been techniques for creating entirely computer generated holograms. The biggest problem so far is getting a printer with a high enough resolution to do this directly.
How does 1000 dpi, full color sound?
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
Zebra holograms are not "decal type silver foil" holograms. They are full color, full parallax, reflection holograms recorded on DuPont photopolymer (not embossed). These images appear very solid and real, they can float in front if the image plane, and appear especially realistic when made from ray-traced computer graphics.
It's two or three back-projection walls and a front-projection floor with alternate frame 3-D synchronizing with a pair of tracked LCD flip glasses. Very clever math for getting the projections right and a very convincing display (especially if you're the one wearing the tracker), but not a hologram.
It is cool, though. I've written code for it.
Holograms called "integrals" have been possible for decades. (They are featured in the 70's cheesoid flick Logan's Run) They are traditionally made from motion picture film, with the subject on a rotating platform. Each frame of film produces a single vertical strip hologram. These integrals produce horizontal parallax, but no vertical.
So, is this just a cheaper way to make bigger integrals, or have they solved the knotty problem of getting vertical parallax as well? If the former, OK, but yawn. If the latter, that's pretty impressive. It's conceivably possible to do, but I can't find anything in the article that makes it clear.
Unfortunately the got some of the important details wrong. They make it look like the image is made with one giant exposure. It is actually made from thousands of tiny (1mm square or 2mm square) holographic elements ("hogels").
This website, LearnHolography.com has some great information for anyone wanting to learn about making holograms simply and safely with a diode laser.
I'd love to have sex with the janitor here. Shhh... I hope she's not listening. :)
Slashdot community, please notice: I am looking for a girlfriend.
Nave H. Weiss