Slashdot Mirror
Real 3D Display; 3 Years Out?
Bob the Super Hamste writes "Fortune magazine is reporting that the company Zebra Imaging is producing a 3D hologram table that will project a 360 degree 3D image that doesn't require glasses. Funding for this project is being provided by DARPA for battle planning. The company expects it will take at least another three years for the table to be ready for commercial applications."
.. Cant you allready do this with an xbox and kinect?
What the heck is a "hogel"?
Voxel is the correct term for the volume represented by a 3D pixel...
But I want to play chess with it, like they did in Star Wars: ANH
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
No current federal politician will ever lower funding for defense. Their opponents will quickly use it to crucify them.
"X is making us less safe! Do you want the terrorists to win?"
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Is this a real hologram ? I doubt it, from the looks of it. Does anyone know the technology actually employed ?
By the way, I believe that the 3-D term for a pixel is a Voxel. I have never heard of a hogel before.
Nah I just want it on my iPhone X.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
This seems much closer instead of the fake 3D as I always hear people complain that it isn't 3d unless they can walk around it. Besides if you wanted a holodeck just have one of these as your floor but don't try to sit on the projected chair.
Time to offend someone
Here is the race to watch:
Which is faster to prototype / easier to bugfix / fails more gracefully / more reliable / scales better :
1) A 3-d display for air traffic control or military battle equiv
2) A computer / AI controlled air traffic control system or military battle equiv
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Let the wookie win.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I agree. Unless I can actually run around in the 3-D environment, there isn't much point in having things projected out of the screen. Sure it's interesting from a technology point of view, but it doesn't really help my gaming or movie watching experience.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
When talking about 'real 3D displays' I always think of simulating a window pane. Current displays represent each small area (pixel) by a constant color that emits photons in a basically directionless fashion. We would commonly refer to this as a raster display, but I'll call it a raster-scalar display to differentiate it from a raster-vector display (the difference being analogous to the difference between scalar and vector fields). A raster-vector display would then represent each small area by varying color intensities by emitting photons in quantized unidirectional directions so that receivers (eyes) at varying locations will pick up varied signals for the same (x,y) location on the display. (It is unfortunate the term 'vector display' is already used, hence the new terminology.) A raster-vector display would only provide depth beyond the pane of the 'window' but the type of display in the article is inverse of this, using holography to produce a kind of virtual 3d model above the plane of the display (or generally inside a cubical region of space). We can imagine that 6 raster-vector displays oriented in a cubical fashion (or less if we neglect the floor) could simulate the type of display in the article (think of a virtual 3d model enclosed in a cube of glass). I don't see an obvious way to simulate a virtual window pane with the holographic model display. In actuality, I'm not by any means sure that a raster-vector display can be built that reasonably approximates a real window-pane, while high dpi raster-scalar displays are certainly able to accurately approximate a sheet of paper.
"I suggest a new strategy...let the Wookie win."
How about have this in your living room floor so that you are really immersed in the environment.
Time to offend someone
Indeed, though I feel the industry will call it something inane like 4D, because 3D has been done already. This is regardless as to what it truly is, such as true 3D projection with hopefully 360' viewing. Seriously, four-dee, I wouldn't put it past them.
Holograms have been used in shows for a while, the problem with them is tha they are too computationally intensive for realtime use. The article only talks about still images, so I guess this is not a 3D television, more like a virtual diorama.
Well, if you go by the book, a 3D "movie" could be called a 4D image ... (But yeah, never a 4D movie)
morcego
Might as well pass on the upcoming 3D star wars and wait for the holographic version where Darth Vader will be replaced George Lucas' neck.
Once again we find that when there's a military application on the line, the money will be spent on R&D no matter how crazy it might sound at the outset. We need a civilian agency for this sort of thing.
The real money is going into developing Flash for it - I understand it requires developers who are clinically insane.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Oh, well according to popular opinion, that means a holographic projector cannot be patented, then.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
The "article" sadly does not provide any meaningful information. Does anyone have any insight on how this thing works? Also, why do they name a 3D pixel a "hogel" (for holographic element) instead of the more usual (at least in other fields) "voxel"?
Pixel -- Picture Element
Voxel -- Volumetric Pixel
Hoxel -- Holographic Voxel?
If we must have a third term, I vote for Hoxel...or rasberry (someone backronym that).
"Hogel", you're vetoed.
Watch it buddy, you almost raised the zombi of Theodor[1] Geisel! Talk about gibbering madness!
[1] I just realized his name is "The odor", hah.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Gotta love those guys in the military though. "We need a holographic display for erm.. battle planing. Yeah. And it needs hd resolution, hdmi plugs and must be hcpa certified"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You mean by a book that uses the construct of time as the 4th dimension? Yeah... that's an interesting and overly convenient construct to sell books about quasi-science BS. Did they use String Theory as an excuse for things in there as well?
There are actual 4D geometric constructs, but they must be displayed in 3D space so they are extremely hard to comprehend. If you search around you can find 3D Rubiks cubes and games that do things like expand on 3D affine matrices to show 4D spacial movement in 3D. Playing these games will deepen your understanding of 4D by giving you an intense headache.
OK, George Lucas referenced it in 1977 and 2001 was made in 1968, so by my calculations Apple shouldn't be claiming ownership over it until 2019 by the earliest. But only if they can figure out how to create a device that sucks buttons out of nearby devices.
The first person who utters the words "Minority Report" will be summarily stabbed in the face with a Buick. Please, people, get over yourselves.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Cool stuff. Reminds me of the Time Traveler video game back from the early 90s. It was fascinating if crude technology back then and I have always been wondering why, with better technology, similar concepts weren't being used today. Well, I guess someone finally stepped up to the plate. Hopefully this will encourage some innovation and creativity in the field of holograms. (o:
Love sees no species.
This sounds like it might be one of those inventions that are forgotten after 3 weeks and never heard about again. Well, who knows.
The industry? People want 3d. They've always wanted 3D. There's no 'shoving' about it. Haven't you wondered why 3D has been a reoccuring gimmick and that each time it resurfaces with better technology it makes MORE money?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
So we are 3 years from a holographic unit and 3 years + 2 months from the first holographic porno.
There is no "the" 4th dimension. A dimension is a degree of freedom. Time can be described as "a" dimension.
A working holodeck? You mean one that doesn't malfunction all the time? I know of several captains who'd kill for one of those.
No good deed goes unpunished. - Avon, Blake's 7
I'll believe it when I see it since I've been seeing "breakthroughs" about volumetric display technology for awhile now.
I have RTFA but nowhere does it explain how it works - just some vague notes on how data is crunched.
Does the display look like the picture in the Fortune Tech page, with actual 3D images that appear before other things around it?
If this is the case, then this is a major innovation. Why isn't it being reported anywhere else?
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
The people want a good story.
No, the people want to be entertained. Sometimes they want a good story, sometimes they want a spectacle, sometimes they want to see something familiar.
They most certainly did not gererate billions in revenue by forcing theaters to project in 3D. Even the Lone Gunmen would scoff at that dumb theory.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Sir William Rowan Hamilton would disagree with both of you.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
"4D" is 3D with certain immersive effects, such as moving seats, a spray of water to simulate being splashed, something in the chair that simulates something touching you from behind, etc. One that I've seen has a rubber hose that they shoot out between your feet to simulate a snake crawling under you.
Length, Width, Depth, Time... Moving seats/water spray/"a rubber hose that they shoot out between your feet to simulate a snake crawling under you."
I guess I am getting old when, "a rubber hose that they shoot out between your feet to simulate a snake crawling under you" counts as a dimension on a "nerd" website.
Now get your motherfucking rubber-hose-snakes-dimension off my motherfucking lawn! ;-)
No, I believe that means that George Lucas would hold the patent.
Spelling and Grammar errors have been added to this post for your enjoyment
3D has been a reoccuring gimmick
I suggest you look up the words "reoccurring" and gimmick, and evaluate what you are trying to say. If people "wanted" it, there would be no need for "gimmicks" and it would not reoccur, it would have taken first time, like oh I don't know, clothes, electricity or internal combustion engines.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I will wait until they have some sort of standard or at least a winner.
If people "wanted" it, there would be no need for "gimmicks"...
No. If we had the technology to give them what they want, there'd be no need for gimmicks. If you have a smart phone in your pocket, you already understand this concept.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Give this to the porn industry and they'll have it ready for commercial "applications" in 6 months.... ...
--- If the bible proves the existence of God, then Superman comics prove the existence of Superman.
If people wanted 3D then plays would be a lot more popular.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
They most certainly did not gererate billions in revenue by forcing theaters to project in 3D.
Actually going to disagree with you there. 3D showings cost the consumer more than 2D showings and if all the showings are only in 3D then yes the theaters are being forced to project in 3D.
They may not have generated an extra billion in revenue by forcing theaters to project in 3D, but they did pull in extra millions due to 3D being rammed down the consumers throat.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Heh. Are you serious?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
I do.
Leaving aside here that what's discussed in the article is not the 3D you appear to be complaining about (though it, too, is no panacea.. viewing angles are too limited for its purpose, imho)... the industry hasn't been trying to shove much of anything. Most content is still 2D and aside from directors who decide to thrust every pointing object at the viewer every 3D movie works just fine in 2D as well. Sanctum, for example, was gorgeous in 3D but it's still quite nice in 2D (visually, that is, movie-wise it's quite 'meh' - but it would have been that if 2D from the get-go and would have been if presented as a book.).
In addition, the current push is in many ways very different from earlier attempts simply due to changes in technology.
I'm not saying there aren't many aspects of it that suck (I feel sorry for those who get splitting headaches and count myself lucky that I'm not among them), but you can't really lump the anaglyph of old in with the polarized / glasses-free variants.
My buddy who went to MIT in the late 90's told me his frat brother was working on a similar project, which is a table that projects an image into real space. Although I was really excited, I was even more bummed out when he said it was a gov't project (mil) and that it would be many years before it ever made it out to commercial space. So if this is "3 years away" from commercial use, we could have this within 10 years lol... it'll still be cool, right?
My abilities are only limited by my imagination
I wonder what would be more expensive:
1) Building a holodeck using 3D technology, force feedback, etc.
2) Hiring a few set designers and a dozen actors to live out your holodeck fantasies (and all that might entail).
The difference in cost doesn't account for the difference in box-office returns. People still have to want to go to the movies in order for box-office receipts to come in.
If it were truely a throat ramming, it wouldn't work, nor would the success of the movie fluctuate with the quality of the stereo conversion.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Can't get more realistic 3D than reality itself.
Not serious, but would love to hear some counter-arguments.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
By counter-argument do you mean you're asking for a list of reasons why movies pretty much killed plays or an explanation of why sitting in the back of the theater is not like standing in the room as events are taking place?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
What movie was it you could only see in 3D, again?
After considering that -- it's trivial to take a "3D" film and show it in 2D, if that's what people really want. You don't hear about that much because people don't want that.
The numbers don't lie. 3D makes money. That means people with money want 3D. You don't appear to understand how this works.
Yes.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
If we want to really get into semantics, how much freedom do you have in the time axis? So far I've only been able to creep forward in an unending progression into the future.
There is no "the" 4th dimension. A dimension is a degree of freedom. Time can be described as "a" dimension.
Yes there is - it is 'time' as defined by the local observer. Time has unique properties not shared by the 3 spacial dimensions which means that it is uniquely defined for each frame of reference unlike the x, y, z axes which can be arbitrarily rotated. Hence we can call time THE 4th dimension because each of us can locally, uniquely define its direction even though globally there is no unique direction.
It sounds like they're just doing real-time holograms, though. Yeah, you can walk around it, but it still displays on a flat surface, it doesn't project an image in real space. Think of it like a big printed hologram, except you can update it in real-time. It's not a free-space display like Star Trek holograms.
Think of it this way: the Zebra display would be like looking through a window into a 3D world, but everything would have to be contained within the window.
I can still imagine some pretty neat ideas for future versions of the technology, however. Standing inside a cube with each face being a display surface, for example. 3D imagery in any any direction you care to look. Combine that with some sort of transparent conveyor belt system and you've got one half of a holodeck (the environment). Unfortunately, without free space display technology, you couldn't interact with anything; nothing could appear inside the cube.
I'm not sure we'll ever have practical free-space displays like that. There are various such displays available now (spinning projection surface, focusing lasers to create plasma balls in free space), but they all have limitations (enclosed vacuum for spinning projection surface, noise/temperature/lack of colour for plasma balls).
But you could, if this technology is scaled up enough. A small 12"x12" display is limited in scope, but scale it up to an 84"x84" display, and then mount six of them orthogonally facing a single point, combined with a transparent motion-tracked conveyor system, and you've got yourself a pretty damned immersive 3D environment in which you can run around in.
Of course, a highly accurate motion tracking system that can determine how you should be moving relative to the ground while keeping you motionless is a pretty tall order itself. Essentially, the conveyor must accurately simulate inertia for a specific human body to make walking feel natural.
I googled some phrases from the article and it seems this is not a freestanding hologram but a table-shpaed block of material that can display volumetric images inside itself. Imagine layering a number of transparent LCD screens on top of each other and displaying cross sections of something to get the entire obejct - this is how this probably works. The resulting images are transparent and not photorealistic: this will be useful for presenting data - medical or geographical - but not for gaming, movies or (damn!) porn.
The display technology employs thousands of highly trained termites and large blocks of wood. We're still working on upping the refresh rate
Theater isn't as popular as movies because the cost is much higher -- for example, I paid $63 a ticket to see "Beauty and the Beast" on stage, but I could buy the DVD/Blu-Ray/"Special Platinum Diamond Plutonium Edition Never Before Released from the Vaults" version for about a third of that.
The second problem apart from cost is the experience. In the theater, I get one point of view, quite a distance from the stage (at least without paying almost three times the price) and there is no focus on particularly important bits of the action. From 32 rows back, I cannot see the tears on Belle's face when Beast is dead, and if I happen to miss LaFou's pratfall, because I happened to be looking at "Large Breasted Blonde Girl #2" during the "Gaston" song, I will *never* be able to see it.
With the DVD, I can rewind, watch it again, lather, rinse, repeat. I can do so in the comfort of my easy chair. I don't have to worry about the woman next to me wearing enough perfume to be a candidate for chemical warfare, or the 6 year old kicking the back of my chair.
When I go to the bathroom, I don't have to worry about the 30 other patrons tapping their feet impatiently behind me, or whether or not there will be any paper towel left to dry my hands.
Small Theater is dying (and has been for decades) because movies made it cheaper, better, and more comfortable not to mention more often, with 10 shows a day vs a maximum of 2 shows a day at a theater. On top of that, the movie performances are always, at least in theory, the very best the director could milk out of the actors, as opposed to the day the Lead actor shows up at the theater drunk, or depressed, or hung over, and flubs half of their lines.
Now the movies are in danger as well, because I can get nearly the same quality of viewing at home, with my big-screen hi-def TV. What am I missing? Nothing but overpriced candy, popcorn, and soda. Twenty years ago I was hitting a movie theater every weekend. Today, I see about 4 movies a year in the theater.
The ONLY place the theaters still have the advantage is with truly engulfing experiences (iMax) and 3D technology which is still too expensive an inconvenient for most home users. This display is the first step towards getting rid of that "inconvenient" barrier. True, projective 3D will be the death-knell for theaters, because there's no way this thing scales up to theater size. Your home experience will now be far superior to the theater for anything but iMax nature films.
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
A 3D display in three years
........
A 4D display in four years
To be fair, although there's no actual description of the damn technology--kudos CNN--the picture appears to be showing actual 3D projection (spinning mirrors perhaps?) rather than those obnoxious stereographic displays or the old-school anaglyphs. This might actually be the proper 3D holographic display we've been dreaming about since Star Wars gave us a glimpse.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
What are you doing wasting time posting on Slashdot? Go feed those kids!
a movie real could be played forwards or backwards, thus the image projected would allow 4 degrees of freedom (if it was a 3D image)
www.RacquetUp.org - Helping Detroit Youth
I'm not sure I understand what the difference between a hologram and a "free-space display" is. How is the projection system relevant?
Maybe it would make less sense for FPS games, but for something like Starcraft, a 3D display like this would be fantastic. It would offer the possibility of more complex terrain with more interesting strategic implications.
A hologram is imprinted on a surface of some kind. You have to look at the surface to see the holographic image.
Now this is a free-space display!
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
Holo Crap!
The three laws of thermodynamics:(1) You can't win. (2) You can't break even. (3) You can't even quit.
You would probably need 2 tables, one facing upward, one facing downward (as a table below can't produce light coming from above), but with 2 tables, it should be possible.
I know what quaternions are. What does that have to do with arbitrarily assigning rigid ordinal labels to degrees of freedom that we can experience?