"Holographic" Desk Allows Interaction With Virtual Objects

Zibodiz writes "The Sensors and Devices group at Microsoft Research has developed a new system called HoloDesk that allows users to pick up, move and even shoot virtual 3D objects. It's about the size of a filing cabinet and is made up of an overhead screen that projects a 2D image through a half-silvered beam splitter into a viewing area beneath. A Kinect camera keeps tabs on a user's hand position within the 3D virtual environment, a webcam tracks the user's face to help with placement accuracy, and custom algorithms bring everything together in (something very close to) real time."

Comments

Re:Point Cloud ?

[derGoldstein]

This is a shot in the dark, but: interacting meshes would involve specific collision detection between surfaces, which (when scanning an object in real time) could lead to locked models (the virtual object could "stick" to you, or other objects). A particle system allows them to define "particles repel each other" and get around that problem. Notice how (relatively) large the particles themselves are -- I'm guessing it can only deal with a limited amount of particles within the environment at the same time.
(and yes, I realize that the size of the particles you see doesn't necessarily mean that this is what the program is doing, but the number of particles probably is)

Sorry

[Dunbal]

I fail to see the practical applications of this. I mean yeah, instead of relying on sensors that are orders of magnitude more sensitive or precise than the human hand, let's re-create a virtual world with a bad physics system and let people use their extremely low resolution hands to do things that they could do for real with real objects. I mean short of being a toy, what is the point?