Holograms - The Future Without The Funny Glasses

hopbine writes "MIT Technology Review has an interesting article on the latest trends in holograms. I like the NYU's NY3D system. It puts an LCD display in front of a normal CRT and by monitoring the viewers eye movement it can flash on and off parts of the LCD screen showing each eye a different image through the gaps, producing a 3D image. Another research project shows how researchers can "feel" the hologram. Maybe the holodeck is not that far away !"

Comments

Technology

[phorm]

If anyone has ever gone into a hologram shop and looked at the merchandise...

Yes, they are cool, but they're also somewhat indistinct. For a lot of them, you get an overlap at various angles, and have to squint a bit. The colors are also way off. While this is ok for a novelty static image, I think that for my PC I would want something of a higher caliber.

The second article shows a "sample" picture. Obviously some of the realism and depth will be lost by showing it on a computer monitor (like those digital TV "see the clarity" ads on my normal set), but it looks pretty indistinct to me.

Showing a wireframe 16-color DNA molecule in pseudo-3d is one thing. Managing to get the broad spectrum of colours in a good refresh rate with realistic and crisp depth is probably going to take some time yet.

Oh, and what's with the demo. "Two cameras track eye movement???" Seems pretty dumb to me, as how is it going to handle multiple people for the stereoscopic view, or ever properly track eye moment.


I think I'll save my quarters for a high-def 21"+ monitor - phorm

Re:Technology

[amthrax]

The low quality holograms that you find in stores are usually exactly that, low quality. A high quality, properly lit hologram can be absolutely breathtaking. I've seen a number of holograms (ironically, at the MIT Museum) that, were it not for their illumination, would have looked real: solid and sharp. One of my favorites was a hologram of a telescope and the night sky. Yes, the telescope worked. You could stand in the right place and look through the holographic telescope and you would see exactly what you would expect to see, had the telescope been real. I even ducked once because I turned to look at a hologram as I was walking by and thought I was going to run in to it. Granted, these were all static holograms, and I don't know how they are achieving/plan to achieve moving holograms (and high quality systems will probably be prohibitively expensive at first).

The LCD overlay is a completely different approach. It is not holographic and does not claim to be. The "two cameras [that] track eye movement" are a vast improvement over previous display technology that uses this same approach, but requires the user to remain stationary (see 3D LCD Display though the technology has been around for a while). And, no, obviously this doesn't work for multiple users because it's targetting the location of a single user.

3D display technology is cool, but still young. The progress that has been made over the past two or three years alone is amazing. Give it a year or two more in the lab, and I bet that it will start having real impact on the world.

Re:Tracking Eye Movements

[broken_bones]

From a technical standpoint agree with you. I'd love to see a 3D system that was viewable from all angles by multiple people without using tricks like eye tracking. Oh the many things I could do..the many games I could play...

However I think it would be wise to consider that technology development is a continuous process of improvement. This isn't the end of 3D development. It is only one step in the process. While this technology may not be particularly useful to the average user right now, it is good to see it being developed because it gives hope that future development will yield really cool toys...er um useful products. Just think about the computer on your desk. Its ancestors used punch cards and vacuum tubes and probably wouldn't have been much use to you personally as a user. They were, however, a necessary step in the development of the desktop computers we use today.

Motion sickness to the next level?

[miscellaneous_havoc]

I must say that the idea of three-dimensional computer use would be extremely... COOL! However, I think that for quite some time during the first years of development, there will be problems with people having adjustment problems. When I first played the N64--before I had a computer--the 3D graphics alone made me a little naucious after the first few hours. I adjusted all right, but that was being displayed on a 2D screen. Well, perhaps it's just me, but I think this won't be too great in its early years.

Disturbing Potential

[DocStout]

With fewer ethical controls on corporate interests, this sort of thing could get wacko-conspiracy-theorist scary. Holographic video is based on technology taking advantage of the difference between the speeds that we can process images with light, and the speeds that information can be translated through the eyes by the brain. Now, movies are based on the same concept, basically, to simulate movement of static pictures. The frightening thing is that subliminal messages should be easier to work into technology such as this, and when presented in the right situation, whether what you are looking at is real or not can even be called into question. Imagine a 3-D advertisement subtly inserted into a virtual fish tank. With sufficiently advanced technology, we could be subjected to ads when we think we're just looking around the "real world", whatever that will come to mean. How possible is it that this technology will be used to advertise before it is used to entertain? Will we know the difference?

These are NOT HOLOGRAMS!

[rufusdufus]

The article and the author, and apparently the readers here are substantially misguided in their understanding of what a hologram is. A hologram is not defined by 3D stereopsis! The technologies listed in the article are not holograms .

A hologram does not use 3D glasses or LCD displays. Holograms are film recordings of a 3D wavefronts of an object. This is very important, as with a hologram, you can look behind objects by moving your viewing position.

Thus, holograms are not illusions of 3D, they are actually 3D--they have true depth and your eyes can focus on different planes of depth.

The technologies listed here (as all other 3D technologies except holography) simply trick your eyes into seeing different images which create an illusion of 3D stereopsis. They do not however allow your eye to focus on different points in 3D space, look behind objects, or change your perspective. They are thus inferior to holograms by a significant amount.

Why dont we have Holographics displays then? Well it has been done, but it takes too much memory to capture the full 3D wavefront of an object, so its not practical yet. Moores law will fix that soon I hope.

Re:These are NOT HOLOGRAMS!

[cybermace5]

At my alma mater, there is a display of holograms in one of the halls.

Several typical displays; someone's head, a dollar bill, a computer motherboard.

And there is one fantastic piece. A hologram of a powerful microscope, that appears to stand right out in full scale.

Walk up to the microscope and place your eye where the virtual eyepiece is located. You will be treated to looking down the barrel of this nonexistant microscope, viewing the silicon die of an integrated circuit.

Until the light wavefronts can be accurately manipulated, no 3D display will ever be able to approach this level of realism. I don't see it happening within my lifetime.

Um...

[autopr0n]

My first reaction every time that I hear this is "isn't there lag in between when a user moves his eye and the computer adjusts?"

How often do you move you're head while sitting in front of the computer? Besides, the system only needs to know where you're eyes are down to the distance between you're eyes. On a system with a lag of 10ms, for example, you would need to move you're head 4 inches in 10ms before you would notice any distortion. That's 227 miles per hour. If you're head's moving that fast, you've got other things to worry about.

Even with a 100ms delay, you've still got to move you're head side to side at 23 miles an hour to lose the holographic display.

As far as eye tracking, if the software/hardware can produce images for 4 points of view, then just track four eyes with the camera, otherwise it's not an issue anyway. Repeat with more sets of eyes.

Re:What is a halodeck?

[Tokerat]

WARNING: This is the geekiest question I have ever asked. Ever. I don't even like Star Trek (*shock and dismay*)! But... there was one thing that always puzzled me:

Is that how someone is able to move around within the Holodeck as if it where a full world and never end up walking into a wall, because these same mini-tractor beams kept them in the same position as the world "scrolled" around them?

Damn, we need some replicators and tractor beam technology, quick.

This is all real, and has been for 2 years...

[phonics]

3D without glasses? yeah, saw it 2 years ago at the Detroit Auto Show. Ford had what looked to be a 6-foot long x 3-foot high flat-panel that was displaying a 3D image. No glasses, opaque, full color, animating airflow. Freaked the hell out of me. I believe the Ford displays are mentioned in the article on the first page...

.. So, why is everyone crying pipe dream / vaporware? Slashdot makes Insta-Experts? I couldn't have imagined.