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.

Comments

Wow. Just... WOW!

[mcgrew]

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!!!

Re:Wow. Just... WOW!

[Tacvek]

So this is a volumetric style display. It can only display objects within its volume. However full volumetric displays this display has only natural horizontal parallax. It can fake vertical parallax using head tracking. It does have one conceptual advantage over proper volumetric displays, namely that it does not require that you can always see through to the back of he shape, but it should be able to emulate that if desired.

- - - -

Let me attempt to create a classification system for 3D display technology.

Volumetric refers to any technology that is restricted to displaying an image within some fixed size area. It cannot show things like stereoscopic movies. Volumetric displays have natural parallax in both directions, so can be observed correctly by any number of viewers. They can be viewed from any direction, except that equipment may obscure the views from some direction.

Some examples:

• A 3d cube of LEDs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aj3_v7xCyJ0
• This volumetric plasma display: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/cb/Laser_plasma_volumetric_display.jpeg

A pseudo-volumetric display is one that can only display in a fixed volume, but fails to meet the one of the requirements of a volumetric display, such as having only natural parallax in one direction, not being viewable from all directions, or only being able to display points on the exterior of the volume.

Examples:

• The display of this article, since it lacks natural vertical paralax.
• This Sony 3d display that lacks natural vertical parallax: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAS55_RngoQ
• Certain types of holograms meat this definition. they have natural parallax in both directions, but can only be viewed from a limited number of angles.
• The following device based on a a structure of rotating LEDs. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLygWkHo9nw This is pesudo-volumetric only because this particular device can only show things on a sphere, and a ring around the sphere. It also does not let you see the far side of the shape. It is entirely possible to build a full volumetric device using the same technology.

Now we have the remaining technology. These pretty much always use one or more flat screens, but that is not a requirement.

A very familiar technology is 2D projection . This is the projection of a 3D image on a 2D surface. This is what we used to mean when we talked about 3D video games, for example. I don't think any examples are needed here.

Now before I go on to talk about additional display types, I should define some terms.

Autosteroscopic indicates that a display gives a stereoscopic image without the need for glasses, goggles, etc. There seems to be no standardized term for the opposite, whIch i will call variosteroscopic

Semi-Immersive means that the view changes depending on the observers position. I mean this beyond parallax. Think of a display acting like a window, so if you stand to the far left or far right you can see different things, while only parallax would give stereoscopy, but you would see the same image from both sides of the display.

Fully-immersive has not just a single window, but surrounds you, or seems to, anyway. VR goggles that track head movement and rotation can supply this kind of display. Volumetric displays that can be walked through also qualify. Later I will discuss how the holodeck fits in.

Now we can get on to our display types.

Variosteroscopic, non-immersive displays. These should be very familiar. They are what mov

Re:Wow. Just... WOW!

[ManlySpork]

Hz= /second RPM = /minute Just a small correction.

Old news...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Old news...

[BobMcD]

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 think this tells us something about the internet as an informational medium. Old news, but how many of us heard of it for the first time today? I know I never saw the 2008 posting, nor would I have frequented whatever site that link is from. Makes you wonder how many things, neat or otherwise, are simply lost to a digital wasteland.

Nothing new

[OzPeter]

The ol' spinning mirror used to fake a real 3d display trick

Re:Nothing new

[camperdave]

Well, because there is only horizontal parallax, and not vertical parallax for one thing. If you had an image of a pair of dice behind a playing card you could move left or right to look behind the card to see the dice, but you could not move up to look over the card to see the dice.

Dup!

[spribyl]

Possibly of a dup from a couple of years ago. I would verify can't be bothered searching or getting to the site.

Re:Dup!

[NewmanKU]

This was posted back in 2008. http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/27/1551232

Re:Yeah, and we'll have lightsabers too.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeqIZyUMDP4

IR lasers focused in a cone by spinning mirrors cause localized ionization of air at a given point. This point emits light. It works. It just isn't practical (what with being blindingly dangerous without IR safety glasses) yet.

Not NEWs

[DaveV1.0]

I saw this two or three years ago on the Discovery Channel.