Slashdot Mirror
One Step Closer to Star Wars Holograms
An anonymous reader noted a USC research project that is coming ever closer to bringing the classic Star Wars communication holograms from Tatooine to Earth. There's nifty video and some high resolution pictures of Tie Fighters projected into 3-D. Still no clear way to project it from an astro mech droid, but I'm sure that's coming.
TFA is amazing. It doesn't go into great detail into how the thing works, but it gives an ok general outline, and the video is cool as hell (glad they imbedded it here).
I can't wait until these replace standard monitors and TV sets. The only drawback is saying goodbye to flat TVs, but that's a small price to pay.
I WANT ONE!!!
Free Martian Whores!
The display was shown at the SIGGRAPH 2007 Emerging Technologies exhibition in August 2007 in San Diego, California, where it won the award for "Best Emerging Technology".
Way to keep up, Slashdot.
Actually if I felt like searching I'm sure I could find this same story posted years ago.
I saw this a couple of years ago, here on /.
The ol' spinning mirror used to fake a real 3d display trick
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Glad to see it's on the fast track to the marketplace with the whole second ./ posting in three years....
Seriously... 3 years old.
With mirrors! Seriously, I saw a "tank" 3D system back in the late 80's/early 90's hooked up to an E&S display system.
}#q NO CARRIER
But it is way too clear and doesn't flicker at all!
are not the droids we're looking for?
All your database are belong to U.S.
Possibly of a dup from a couple of years ago. I would verify can't be bothered searching or getting to the site.
The video notably has no audio track, which keeps you from hearing the WHIRRRRRRR being pumped out by the spinning mirror. Compare this demo to, say, this demo of a motorized laser system.
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
The IR laser plasma blossoming display is much cooler (except for the blinding infrared radiation). It has potential at least, since it works in a given volume without the need for a top surface or spinning mirror.
True glasses-free non-face-tracking non-volumetric non-parallax (which is limited to two views, as in the 3DS) 3d in a flat-screen might be possible with a super high refresh (plasma at 600hz for example) and moving multi-prism lenticular layer (or a spinning prism column over each pixel row), that would, for say 32 different angles, give a different offset picture 1/32nd of the time. This would require stacking RGB subpixels vertically though or you'd get a rainbow effect. It would also require a mechanical layer, unless an LCD-like effect could be found for adjusting refraction of light at the pixel scale, that worked at ~600hz.
And, if you wanted it 3d in two planes, you could maybe use laser emitters and DPS for each pixel. This would need ~24000hz refresh rate to give you 32 x 32 angles. What do you mean it would be too expensive? heh
IMHO 3d is a fad. Not even a new one.
while the video is VERY impressive, i can't help but see the danger in something like this. Let's be for real, this thing better have some sort of glass barricade around it or people will be getting their fingers cut off pretty quick. :P
Light goes until it stops and hits something. Those free-floating projections from the movies are, based on current knowledge, impossible. And so are fucking lightsabers.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
It uses a high speed spinning mirror and requires head tracking, not very practical imo. Second, this is already quite old, the first time i saw this exact setup was at least a few years ago.
They have done some cool things to achieve the effect. Key problems to overcome were:
1. The mirror isn't. A regular rotating mirror would allow viewing from a narrow range of heights. The mirror they use is diffuse in the vertical direction, while acting like a regular mirror in horizontal direction.
2. How to get a fscking fast projector: they use a regular DVI stream, but encode multiple one-bit images into the components. That way a 16-bit-per-pixel stream gets you 16 binary frames per each DVI frame. With 200Hz refresh rate, that is 3200 monochrome frames per second. To decode the stream, they use a custom FPGA-based decoder between the DVI input and the DLP chip.
3. How to render the source material so that it looks good -- and do it in real time, too. They overcome various sources of distortion,
All in all, methinks this is worthy of re-publishing, even if it's stale. Very cool technology.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Who here clicked on the link and then imagined their sweating web admin saying "It's a trap!"
No one ever expects the slashdot site ignition...
The spinning mirror combined with the assymetric diffuser gives each viewpoint in the horizontal plane a different image just like a real 3d object would. The place where I get lost is they claim they also have a way to make the vertical viewpoints 3d correct. I don't see how.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
"One step closer to Star Wars holograms" ... pshaw.
Where are the vertical distortion lines?! (sigh) ... OK, here is how you can make up for the utter fail:
1. ADD the vertical distortion lines ... for free (holds breath)
2. As the surface begins to spin up, add a stall complete with Millennium Falcon stall sounds, then, when it reaches full speed add a Wookie roar.
3. Send me one
L'esperienza de questa dolce vita (The experience of this sweet life) - Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy
When do we get 3D, POV, interactive porn?
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
I saw this two or three years ago on the Discovery Channel.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
I'm not interested until I can safely move my hand through the image.
No, you're looking for this http://www.hvrl.ics.keio.ac.jp/paper/pdf/Ishikawa-AsiaGraph.pdf
Check the credits...not quite what I was hoping but the illusion is still pretty cool.
Execute Order 66!
Star Wars communication holograms weren't exactly impressive anyway. Monochrome with loads of glitches? Please. Even in the Star Wars universe the geeks of the day were probably saying these free-standing 3D hologram things were nothing but a cheap gimmick. Give me a full-colour wall-sided 2D or 3D display anyday (which they apparently also had). Of course, had they done that people would have realized Darth Sideous == Senator/Chancellor/Emperor Palpatine as early as Episode I, and it could have saved a lot of hassle.
Yes, you're reading that right: the Star Wars fascination with those hokey holograms was the ultimate downfall of the entire Republic.
was very cool, but I was really hoping to see the 3d image force-choke the guy holding the controls.
Holograms are not projected.
If you view it on Youtube they've conveniently added a button that adds the sound of vuvuzelas, if that makes it more authentic.
here
OP article is old. Sony has a color version prototype that was shown last year.
http://www.physorg.com/news175446089.html
...to display realtime 3D scanned video:
http://gl.ict.usc.edu/Research/3DTeleconferencing/
They don't spin one of those DLP chips instead. Presumably all that would be necessary would be to Illuminate it then.
Nullius in verba
While the big spinning mirror thing in a box is really cool, it suffers from the same problem all holograms do, especially when comparing it to the R2-D2 style of hologram. That is, it's entirely contained within a projection medium. The neat trick would be getting a 3D projection onto an unoccupied space. From what I've read on the subject, this isn't really possible (unless there is sufficient particulate matter in the air to provide something to project onto). I suppose it might be possible to use creative optics to create the illusion of a projected hologram, but it would be difficult to provide the same illusion to everyone watching, from every angle, using the same projector.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
This is older than my grandma. Also somehow slashdot thinks I have bad karma for speaking r e a l i t y. Mod me down please to the evil troll diety level...
I've always found the Star Wars holograms bizarrely low-quality. You'd think a galactic civilization with hyperspatial travel could build a better communication system than their blotchy, wavery, interference-prone monochromatic holograms. Perhaps they could invent 2D LCD television instead. They'd be lightyears ahead in image quality.
You know... this is the next excuse the Iranians are going to give for having their centrifuges....
Huh?
seen the revolving mirror thing several years ago, what will make these things work is CPUs and GPUs that are fast enough to render quality 3D images. I also agree that the SW holograms are lo-fi and I could never spot the 'camera' used to transfer the image, even if it was a movie, it's a hole in the design.
Wow, you guys are way behind. I saw a similar thing at Canterbury University in 1991 with a rotating screen, vacuum tube and electron gun.
It's a Swept Surface Volumetric Display A friend and I actually built one in my shed. We removed the colour wheel from a DLP projector and replaced the bulb with a green laser. We projected from below onto a translucent spinning helix, which gave a better volumetric image than the flat surface used by these guys. We then animated a helical slice of a scene and interlaced the frames so that the red, green, blue, cyan, magenta and yellow projected sequential slices of the helix. It worked quite well, although with a pre-compiled animation we had some vertical sync issues - the scene would move up or down through the space like an old TV. I've started writing a graphics engine that will take a normal 3D model and slice it up it in real time synced to the rotation of the helix via a hall effect sensor.
Unexpect the expected!