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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.
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....
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.
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Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
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.
Check the credits...not quite what I was hoping but the illusion is still pretty cool.
was very cool, but I was really hoping to see the 3d image force-choke the guy holding the controls.
Holograms are not projected.
Yes, but now the 3D star wars holograms are being done with open codecs, HTML5, and CSS instead of old-style tables.
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
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
I've seen this video at least a year ago on YT.
If I had any points left, I'd mod you up. But you know better than to care about that. The points model is supposed to filter out bad messages, and deliver good ones - but often fails.
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?
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!