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Sony Demo'ing 360 Degree 3-D Tabletop Display
JoshuaInNippon writes "Sony announced via a Japanese press release that they will be showing off a prototype of a tabletop 360 degree 3-D display that can be seen in any direction without special glasses at the Digital Content Expo 2009 in Tokyo, from October 22-25. The device is quite small, at just over 10 inches tall and 5 inches in diameter. The display, using LEDs, currently supports an image that is 96 pixels wide by 128 pixels tall, with 24-bit full color. Sony also says it could have a number of applications, such as a digital sign, a digital frame, a medical display, or a virtual pet. Looking at the product image, who else wants to bet on the latter?)"
How about an application that, using the webcam, grabs an image of the user's face and then wraps it onto a 3d model of a little head on this display.
Your own tiny, somewhat distorted face would stare at you for a while, and then begin a high, thin, tormented wailing, smashing itself against the confines of the display tube. It's like a screensaver; but with more sanity damage.
96 pixels wide by 128 pixels tall
If this thing is a 3D display, shouldn't there be another pixel dimension quoted here?
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FP?
Like the 3D displays I saw at SIGGRAPH?
Fun, but kind of useless at that size, unless you're R2D2 and have a vital message for an older Jedi warrior. I can envision floor and ceiling mounted projection units mounted flush that will do this sort of thing to display mannequins, advertisements, and battle station blueprints. I would think with a large enough angle from the floor and ceiling you wouldn't need any side projectors.
If you had such a 360 degree 3d display, what would you use it for?
I don't know about anyone else, but I would use mine to project a 3d representation of a crudely drawn penis.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
This, or something else truly 3D (as opposed to stereo tech), will no doubt be scalable. The problem we have, really, is there is no 3D media. No movies, TV shows, etc. Only computer generated imagery is readily available in 3D at this point.
Making stereo media is almost trivial. 3D is a whole nuther ball of wax. Highly desirable, but no less difficult for that.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
This device will be great for hunting my enemies.
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Dick
Will Disney... sell Tinkerbell porn for this?
I'm waiting for the 'adult' applications of this technology.
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Endgagdet story from 2007
Siggraph 2007 video
Siggraph 2009 demo
Sony also says it could have a number of applications, such as a digital sign, a digital frame, a medical display, or a virtual pet. Looking at the product image, who else wants to bet on the latter?)
Latter refers to the second of two choices or things mentioned, not the last in a list of things, and I have no idea why there is a close parenthesis at the end of the summary, when there is no corresponding open parenthesis.
Just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean that they're not out to get you.
The spinning mirror technology has been around for quite some time, I remember seeing demos at Siggraph 10 years ago and it definitely goes farther back than that. Same idea behind the spinning LED clocks you can buy now, except adding a third dimension with a larger LED array and different axis of rotation for the mirror. What is changing now is packaging and integration, and advances in various sub-technologies that make it more viable. As it matures it begins to look like something more useful / fun, and the cost comes down. Obviously the mechanical rotation limits the practicality of the size of the thing, but this could be useful in a few applications, it might compliment the use of stereoscopic vision for medical procedures, and be a fun toy as the poster suggests.
People say that the two things that drive technology are war and porn. This device can be used for both.
Supersize the device and you can use it to display a 3d rendering of a tactical battlespace (submarine warfare, urban combat, mountains terrain, etc.). Or have a life-sized nude stripper dancing in it.
Sounds like you can get lots of money to fund development from the military and from rich dudes with too much money.
The trickle-down effect is that we can also use this for 3-D architectural blueprints, 3-D environmental modeling of the inside of mountains for spelunking, gaming, etc.
"you enter a maze of twisting passages, all alike..."
Looks like a more polished version of LED-POV displays that many people have gotten to work already.
Wouldn't want to be around one when the mirror / imaging plane shatters. Also pity the poor child who manages to get his/her hands past any containment system.
Its clearly the rotation screen idea. Those clocks and other gimic 2D displays where a line of LEDs are moved quickly to create a virtual flat surface and a synchronized micro controller figures out what to flash on the LEDs when they "scan" past a point in space. The concept is similar to the old tube TV with electron scans-- but in a way, it is more primitive in that a physical scanning process is involved.
The 3D version is the same concept but has a flat surface screen that rotates on the Z axis. Their photo is a cylinder tube which implies its a rotating screen like all the others of this kind. What is odd, is why they didn't leave the top open-- the earlier designs made the top clear-- and could use a hemisphere to cover it.. I suppose its easier on the bearings and RPM to be supported on both sides of the shaft...
It has serious physical limitations. rotational velocity means screen size must be small and it has to be STRONG (so LED not LCD.) Probably needs 2 screens on the 2D surface to get a good frame rate at a lower RPM. I'm guessing they went for higher RPM in a tube with screens on both sides using surface mount LEDs. (they could have wanted the top just to keep vibration and noise down so it could be made with lower tolerances.)
The reason I do not think it is a mirror like other people is the low resolution of the image-- if they are going to reflect a screen they may as well enlarge it and place a higher quality screen near the center of the shaft where the forces are minimized. Say they do some clever optics with a stationary screen-- the why not use an even better screen?
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Nuff said.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
96 pixels wide by 128 pixels tall
And how deep?
1) Removal of flicker. In spinning mirror either mechanics or electronics couldnt really update the outer voxels fast enough, so you'd see flicker.
2) Implementation of the color "black". You can get a void with a spinning mirror, but no absence of light, e.g. black. The picture in the article appears to have lots of black in it.
Never forget, never forgive.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_rootkit
Here's how a commercial, usable version of this technology would work. There would be a large tank (called a "holo tank" of course) made of glass, with a bigger rotating mirror. The mirror would probably be 30" diagonal or so. The tank would be evacuated of air so that the rotor could spin quickly without much noise or friction. Due to the internal vacuum, uh, tank the whole assembly would be quite large and heavy. A DLP projector with light from LEDs would project the image onto the rotating mirror. DLP mirrors are more than fast enough to refresh the image the 1000 times a second or so that this display would need.
The whole thing would need an awful lot of glass and fine optics inside it, more than anything from previous generations of technology. I suspect that a mass produced, mass market holo tank with a 30" mirror would cost several thousand dollars.
There would be two kinds of content it would display : one would be 3d content where the image just switches rapidly from left eye to right eye as the mirror spins. Essentially, you'd look at the tank from any angle, but would see the same thing in 3d. Films would be displayed this way.
The other would be true 3d, where if you walk around to the back you would see the back of the object in question. Doing it this way takes a LOT more computing power...but the probably is embarrassingly parallel, such that massively parallel CPUs and graphics cards would be well suited to generating the image.
I don't know if the technology will ever take off, again due to the aforementioned cost. Goggle displays that could create the ILLUSION of a holo tank in front of you would vastly cheaper to manufacture.
Didn't they use it to "Beam" their correspondents into their studio on several occasions.....????
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
I'd have the most dope hood ornament on the block! Actually, these would make sweet xmas ornaments as well.
God that's a tiny image.
Why don't they just hire the artist chick from Bones, who's also a genius hardware and software computer engineer?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
That's not 3D porn. That's stereo porn.
Which supports what I said in the first place; stereo media is easily made, as it's just two flat images or streams of images -- two cameras instead of one -- 3D media, with complete visual information on every angle of a scene, is neither easy to make or readily available unless it is sourced from a computer model.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.