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A 3D Display You Can Touch
mikejuk writes "Are we getting closer to really effective volumetric 3D display technology? A new display, designed in Russia, uses cold fog and a laser projector to create a volumetric 3D image that you can touch. A tracking device (no, it's not a Kinect) is used to detect the user's hand and moves the virtual objects in response. There have been cold fog 3D displays before, but this one has a reasonable resolution and looks near to being a finished product that could be on sale soon. Estimated price? Between $4000 and $30,000."
At last: a realistic estimate!
http://michaelsmith.id.au
That's a funny definition of "Touch" - yes it responds to your finger, but there isn't anything physical there to push against, so it's no more a touch interface than Kinect is.
Help me! I'm turning into a grapefruit!
May not be as good as you imagine: no tactile feedback.
"Touch me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only bloke."
What advantage does this offer that could justify the upper bound on pricing? Is there anything that could justify a 4K price? or is this just a novel idea thing?
$4k vs. $30k probably depends whether they lovingly hand-craft 10 units or get a sweatshop to knock them out in quantity.
$4k would be low enough for some gadget freaks (i.e. the ones with $5k hi-fis and $10k tellys) with more money than sense to buy them for fun.
$30k might be low enough for research teams with an end-of-year surplus to get one in order to investigate your first question.
I'm sure that they'll want one on CSI but they're fictitious so its probably cheaper and more convincing to mock one up with CGI in post-production.
Super-villains will want the 20' x 20' de-luxe model to explain their world domination plans in terms that even an over-sexed British spy or Austrian ex-bodybuilder can understand - that will cost more than $30k but (a) Super-villains never pay, they just murder the creator and (b) see 'CSI' above.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
It's just another piece of vaporware!
Bad slashdot reporting as usual.
The big deal here is the "mid-air" aspect, i.e. no actual surface.
However the display is 2D and the article makes no claim for it being 3D. It's not volumetric, it's not 3D. It's a projector.
It's very cool, and Slashdot has just completely misrepresented it. Well done.
This is entirely 2D, not 3D.
The eu.techcrunch.com article makes no mention of 3D. It's the i-programmer.info dopes that mislabeled this as 3D. The slashdot submitter and editor also get blame for perpetuating the error.
The technology uses a base unit that blows a basically 2D "sheet" of fog upwards as a display surface. Behind that there is a 2D laser projector aimed at the fog display screen.
Some people mentioned the keyboard in the demo as 3D, but no, that was the same as any ordinary 2D windowing system. The 2D keyboard that came up merely replaced the 2D content that was supposedly 'behind' it.
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I don't need this. It's cold and gives no tactile feedback. I already have that, I'm married.