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HoloVizio 3D, Holodeck 1.0 to Some, Makes Its Debut
TaeKwonDood writes to tell us that another step towards Star Trek's Holodeck technology has been taken with the advent of HoloVizio 3D. Allowing users to see and manipulate objects in 3D without the assistance of goggles, this distributed system shows a lot of promise. "The HoloVizio is a 3-D screen that will allow designers to visualize true 3-D models of cars, engines or components. Better yet, gesture recognition means that observers can manipulate the models by waving their hands in front of the screen. The function offers enormous scope for collaboration across the globe."
The HoloVizio is a 3-D screen that will allow designers to visualize true 3-D models
I'd like to order up one Cindy Crawford, one of the brunette woman from the Mercury ads, and one of that hot chick in Accounting.
of cars, engines or components.
Oh.
Also, it sounds kinda lame... CRS4 also developed rendering and visualisation software that may reveal the artistic secrets of the great masters, like Michelangelo. A scan of his famous David revealed that the eyes diverge. You can see the same effects if you look at a picture taken from the right angle. It isn't revolutionary, it sounds an awful lot like an awful lot of hype!
Allowing users to see and manipulate objects in 3D without the assistance of goggles...
You mean these 3D goggles I bought for HoloVizio - they do nothing?
The function offers enormous scope for collaboration across the globe.
It looks like they need enormous scopes to just display the images, let alone collaberate. As for that guy "manipulating" the Rubic's cube... well, let's just say the gesture recognition needs a lot of work. It looked a lot like he was just following the movements of the cube, rather than the other way around.
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according to their site the 3D effect works for multiple views. whether or not each viewer sees a different perspective is unclear, but wasn't the Wii hack for a single view?
3d INTERACTIVE porn
It looks exactly like everything else in the 2D medium that it is being presented in.
I don't know about you, but this looks like a spruced up version of Johnny Chung Lee's head tracking experiment with a guy pretending to motion-sync with the object moving on the screen. I don't think it can truly be validated without a lot of first-hand witnesses.
Looking at the demo video (comment below) and reading TFA, it looked more like a gesture response on a 2D screen than anything approaching a holodeck. More like Tom Cruise's display selection used in "Minority Report"
In any case, the guy in the video looked like he was following the movement of the Rubic's cube, not guiding it. If you were a VC, I would suggest investigating this a lot more - it seems to be more vapourware than something that's ready for prime time.
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But this article is light on the details. How does it work, what will it cost, when will it be available, is it even viable for mass production? 3D displays have been "any day now" for years, gonna need convincing to believe that this one's anything other than just another one of the numerous attempts that are hyped all over the place but never actually amount to anything.
Hell, I'd be happy with head tracking, I mean come on, it's been demonstrated by some guy using a bloody wii remote, why can't we even get a proper working implementation of that for games and 3d modeling software and whatnot?
Nobody expects the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal.
...more like Holodeck 0.01.
When I can spray a truffle-shuffling Chunk with my tommy gun, then we'll start talking about release candidates.
I think you mean Shi 'Ar Danger Room technology(though I'm sure someone else had this idea before the X-Men)
My other sig is extremely clever...
I've been waiting some 20 years for home virtual reality and yet I still can't go into a shop and buy an immersive virtual reality games system or even a decent Head Mounted Display that has anything like human field of view. I'd like to be able to walk around games like Oblivion and look up at a huge castle by tilting my head back, giving me a real sense of how small I am in the world. I could buy a HMD now, but the FOV is like tunnel vision and so is hardly immersive. In fact FOV rather than stereo viewing is probably the most important thing for immersion since your binocular vision breaks down quite quickly over distance.
I wonder how many more years we are going to have to wait. It's really annoying since we have the computer power now (Compared to the Dactyl Nightmare cube graphics days) , but the visual hardware is lagging far behind and there doesn't seem to be much will to bring VR to the masses.
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pr0n is the main driving force for many technologies. It made things popular: - Internet - Movie Theatres - DVDs (especially the multi-angle features) - The VCR.
Close your eyes. Now imagine that you are on the balcony of mountaintop villa in Italy. The scenery is breathtaking-- the snowcapped peaks off in the distance, the hustle of the beautiful, palm-tree-lined streets below. The ocean pounding the cliffs to the west. Standing beside you is Cindy Crawford. She's pulls your head toward her, and kisses you full on the mouth, reminding you that you need to be looking at her and not the village... Now let your imagination carry you away.
There. Home virtual reality. And it was FREE even.
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http://www.crs4.it/vic/data/papers/ieeevr2006ws-holo.pdf
No jokes about Captain Picard saying "Come!". Okay? :)
I've heard that that was what they printing after they finished the Gutenberg bible.
...
It's amazing what a dick can bring to mankind.
All the holodeck ever did was try to take over the Enterprise, kill everyone on board and, assuming Ensign Barclay must have at some point loaded an anime tentacle porn simulation, mate with the more nubile females in the crew.
He who does not learn from the future is doomed to repeat it!
Looks 2D to me.
Heck with all that Star Trek sex rubbish! The true geek-gasm these things should give you is the potential for the Ultimate Star Wars Lightsaber game! Construct something like the Wiimote controller, but with lightsaber designs from the Star Wars movies. Throw in some gesture recognition for some force powers, and you have the ultimate geek game. Imagine it -- immersive 3D effects with physics, you holding a lightsaber, or gesturing to telekinetically deflect objects.
Dave & Busters would make a killing on those! I wonder how many Jedi would show up in costume robes?
I've been waiting 35 years for working X-Ray glasses. :-(
I don't think it's the men in porn driving the business....
No, it's all the rest of them.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
very lame
I'm sure it featured some sort of automated fluid capture and disposal. It did use forcefields for everything, after all.
If the first one didn't feature that, you can sure bet version 2.0 did!
Why, yes I have been touched by His noodly appendage. And I plan to sue.
This is a rather old article but it explains the technology behind this type of 3d display compared to others.
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I think most people here don't see what's actually going on... This is a real 3d, like imax, but without the glasses and since you're all viewing it on a 2d screen, of course you can't see the 3d!!. They are using holograms to achieve real 3D. I know no one reads TFA but still, some of the comments today aren't of slashdot level.
I wasn't sure from TFA whether this was actual 3D W/ Parallax or just head tracking.
If this can actually simulate parallax and depth with a decent refresh rate and color depth, it would be really cool. You could make fake windows that would actually look real, and about a hundred other aesthetic displays. I could make one in the shape of a portal displaying a fake room, and it would look real! so cool!
Uh.. if you had actually read TFA like you claim, then you'd know that this is nothing like a system that tracks people round the room and changes the view accordingly. It works for multiple viewers, so it obviously is putting out different images for each angle. That's what makes it interesting. Anyone with some accelerometers and small displays can do VR headset type stuff, but this seems to be a 'true' 3D display, albeit on a 2D surface
which is totally what she said
"Make it so baby. Uh yeah. Right there baby. Engage ENGAAAGGGE.
His method also only works for one viewer. It is of course much more practical and useful until we have computers that can render complex scenes from all angles at once though. The display in TFA is much more like a real 'holodeck' because it works for multiple viewers, but in the meantime all we need to make better games/simulations is head tracking.
which is totally what she said
Hah. And here I'm thinking that all they wanted to rotate were Rubic's Cubes. How naive of me.
That's actually the main reason VHS won over Betamax--Sony wouldn't allow pr0n on its media.
"Oooh. I hate it when a paradigm shifts without a clutch"
this isn't about screen display vs. headset vr...at all (keep your red herrings to yourself)...this IS about using hand motions to manipulate the image
from TFA:
The 3-D image is maintained as they move about - both in contrast with early attempts at holographic displays. But the real star of the Coherent project is not simply the display...Better yet, gesture recognition means that observers can manipulate the models by waving their hands in front of the screen. The function offers enormous scope for collaboration across the globe.
obviously, TFA disagrees with you. as others have posted, the multiple view '3D' on a screen is not new...and (according to TFA...see above), the main thing they are boasting about is the ability to "manipulate models by waving their hands"...which was only demo'd for a short time and was hilarious b/c the demonstrator was clearly not manipulating the Rubix cube, but following it's movements.
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For serious! There are like 35 other 3d displays that don't require head tracking and show a true 3d image from multiple angles to multiple people simultaneously. My Fisher Price HoloView 3000 does the exact same thing!
Watch the video. The fact that the camera was moving and changing angles while someone else was interacting with it from their own perspective is what is interesting about this product. Assuming the video isn't faked, its a pretty cool development and I haven't seen much else like it. If you're going to have people sitting around a conference table manipulating some virtual 3d object (think that scene in Iron Man where he's building the suit), then this is the kind of tech you need. Strapping on glasses or ductaping some crap to your head so everything comes from your perspective is not the way to go.
According to the web site this isn't honest-to-goodness holography, but works on similar principles.
HoloVizio is not a purely holographic system that handles an enormous amount of redundant information. It is rather based on holographic geometrical principles with special focus on reconstructing the key elements of spatial vision. The pixels, or rather voxels of the holographic screen emit light beams of different intensity and colour to the various directions. A light-emitting surface composed of these voxels will act as a digital window or hologram and will be able to show 3D scenes undoubtedly being 3D.
So, yeah, it is interesting, but still a lot of unanswered questions.
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This doesn't work like the usual autostereoscopic 3D monitors. A few seconds in Google lead me to their site: http://holografika.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=29&Itemid=63 Note the described operation, and also the interesting claim that "There's no contradiction between eye-convergence and focusing"--this is not the case with 3D shutterglasses or normal autostereoscopic monitors.
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(similar to those that even Zalman started to mass produce for very cheap).
It has nothing to do with all the recent development in visualing actual *volumes* in true 3 dimensional space, such as displays based on air plasma (project a monochrome image in space by focussing lasers to locally form small plasma pixels in the air) or displays using a rotating projection screen. Those technologies produce image in space that can actually be viewed from any where around.
In opposition to auto-stereo screen such as this one which produce either stereo left/right images (like Zalman) or a little bit more (like the one from TFA ? Or do they still only use left/right pairs and rely on head tracking to increase the viewing angle) and simply can be displayed without googles, because they rely on some built-in filter (lenticualar or something).
Whatever, it's still a screen, and you can only see the 3D by staying in front. If you walk around, all you see it the back of the shiny plastic case of the display. Not the displayed object it self from behind.
So the comparison with holodeck really sound stupid and sound clumsy at best.
They should have centered their marketing around the argument "Look, our auto stereo display allows for a wider angle than the concurrence's". Also, already been done, by the guy who used cheap Wii sensor bars to do the same effect. The wii guy use the wiimote (which have the actual hardware inside). The sensor bar is a misnomer. it's just a pair of infra leds and can safely be replaced by a pair of candles. (safely : as long as you don't hurl the remote at them and/or as long as your screen isn't flamable).
Plus his 3D display demo is done on a regular TV set. The displays does indeed follow the viewer (or at least the bearer of the infra red hat). But when you have it in front of you, the display never the less looks flat, as both eyes receive the same pictures (as opposed to having 3D google filtering separate image for each eye or having the lenticular filter of an auto-stereo display sending different image to each eye).
Don't get me wrong : the wii guy's technology is really cool. But it could be even more cooler when coupled to 3D googles or auto-stereo screen.
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Judging by the new film Iron man this tech has been round for longer than we think. It is hard to imagine that because of the film this tech has been developed. I am not saying that in the incarnation in the film that that is the current marker or the technology but that is where it is going. I want my armour!!!!
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flamebait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
I'm sorry, but it really bugs me when people refer to Star Trek TNG when refering to a Holodeck. But totally ignore the fact that Ray Bradbury's The Veldt described the very same thing decades earlier. Oh, and the guy that wanted Cindy Crawford⦠DON'T DATE HOLOGRAMS!
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
My first impression... another head tracker....
My second impression... a really nifty way to actually get a screen to shine what you want in any direction.
Each pixel acts as a projector! this file explains how!
http://www.coherentproject.org/news_files/136_143.pdf
My guess is that they flash the lights behind the screen at a high frequency and use a high frequency liquid crystal to block all the rays they don't want...
This display probably gets very hot, because much of the light would be blocked. BUT... it would truly display a 3D image!! Amazing.
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Gesture recognition is hardly amazing, have you never played with an eyeToy or software that comes with your webcam? I remember about 8 years ago our webcam had software where you could pop bubbles. The guy trying to manipulate the object did look like an idiot and kept moving wrong so the thing was working as intended, but wasn't doing what *he* wanted it to do as he kept trying to moving his hands into position before trying to move the cube, but then in the process of moving into position the thing recognised his movements anyway.. meh. I've never seen any 3D stuff like this before and I think it's the true achievement here. Recognising movement and collision detection is regarded as quite trivial these days. I don't care what TFA says, it's very light on technical details, and if they think that recognising similar movements or detecting velocities is more complex than designing a holographic display, they're idiots.
which is totally what she said
I feel sorry for the people of Amsterdam. At least half of them will be out of jobs.
Yes a stupid monitor, but no. You still need to look at the screen. Which sucks. But it is not so much about rendering different images and offering each eye a single one as it is a device that renders focussed dots of light into the air. It requires quite some power to do that actually. For your info the only display that doesn't require looking onto a screen directly (and which still looks cool) is the heliodisplay from http://www.io2technology.com/ but it is not 3D
I'm pretty sure that's what they meant by this: "The function offers enormous scope for collaboration across the globe."
I mean, what else could they be referring to apart from 'touching' other people?
Unfortunately it will suffer from the same problems as all the other schemes, i/e. - that '16 year old Candi' from California will really be '350lb Turleen' from Alabama.
No sig today...
You can use a Wiimote to turn a TV into a wide-angle stereoscopic 3D display with unlimited simultaneous viewers (because it doesn't need to track heads) and gesture recognition? Wow, I thought it just did some trivial head tracking.
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... had to be there.
More like holodeck 0.1 alpha, long way to go to become star trek's holodeck
you'd think they'd have decent demo videos. I mean for the love of the Holodeck, if you're trying to film something that looks 3D, and you want to convince us it looks 3D, maybe move the camera in a three-dimensional motion? Like walk around the TV or something? Sheesh.
And this one:
You seem confused. Do you like this product? Is it revolutionary? If not, then you have been flaming me for nothing. Pick a side...
I'm not an expert on "3D" viewscreens, but some
I still say this product means virtually nothing in the grand scheme of display advancement. It doesn't really get us any closer to a true 3D display (there is plenty of people trying to do research on that), it's just a really, really expensive plasma screen that has a small bit of 'wow' factor for a small number of people. The gains for video screen display are approaching a zero sum game...thousands of dollars more in price for very little added value in the product.
Thank you Dave Raggett
lol I've lost this post twice now. Great. Even shorter rewrite ahead!
:p All the self styled experts on /. are just slagging it off and saying the Wii guy did a better job. His method is indeed very cool, and great for a single user, especially since it only has to render a scene once, same as any current 2D computer game. The 3D projector thing will work to provide at least partial stereoscopic vision though as the display does appear to change depending on where you are standing, and not just for one person, but for anyone at any angle. It has much more potential for advancing towards true 3D display tech than a head-tracking device, and I for one think it's pretty clever and had never heard of that method before.
2D collision detection is easy, and it's all that's needed here. I did 2D collision detection when I was twelve. Line detection is more complicated, but plenty of algorithms and code are available to do it - for example code, you could probably look at neon/emboss type plugins for the GIMP. Just combine the two by detecting if one line moves over an object in your scene and you have 'gesture recognition'. You'd also need to do a bit of 3D stuff when detecting how to apply an acceleration the model on-screen. Perhaps the system here recognises hand shapes as well, but again IMO that's not an insurmountable task and isn't very amazing these days, when you get mobile phones who's cameras do "face recognition".
Go look at http://www.crs4.it/vic/data/papers/ieeevr2006ws-holo.pdf and you'll see that this is not a plasma screen, it's a clever use of a large array of projectors and box with mirrors in
which is totally what she said
well, thanks for the link...obviously you know more about this tech than I do...you're right, the article was pretty lame on tech details
.pdf, I can see why this IS considered a significant advancement
after looking over that
I guess you could say that my criticism about the marketability of this doesn't really apply b/c it's more like research (european at that) than a VC funded startup.
the diagram that shows the different projectors and mirrors got me to thinking about how this could very well result in something like a real 3D holograhic projection, on the order of, say R2D2's little 3-d projector only much bigger and with more mirrors
take it easy man
Thank you Dave Raggett