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MIT Develops Holographic, Glasses-Free 3D TV
MrSeb writes "Engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are busy working on a type of 3D display capable of presenting a 3D image without eye gear. What you've been presented with at your local cinema (with 3D glasses) or on your Nintendo 3DS console (with your naked eye) pales in comparison to what these guys and gals are trying to develop: a truly immersive 3D experience, not unlike a hologram, that changes perspective as you move around. The project is called High Rank 3D (HR3D). To begin with, HR3D involved a sandwich of two LCD displays, and advanced algorithms for generating top and bottom images that change with varying perspectives. With literally hundreds of perspectives needed to accommodate a moving viewer, maintaining a realistic 3D illusion would require a display with a 1,000Hz refresh rate. To get around this issue, the MIT team introduced a third LCD screen to the mix. This third layer brings the refresh rate requirement down to a much more manageable 360Hz — almost within range of commercially produced LCD panels."
Do they need to add more LCD panels? :)
"MIT Develops Holographic, Glasses-Free 3D TV"? Only if by "holographic" you mean "not holographic"
You can't shut us down! The Internet is about the free exchange and sale of other people's ideas!
I can't wait to see another shitty Tupac. Wait, that's redundant.
"Please state the nature of your medical emergency."
That's what this is.
The article from the first link is a little better explanation than the second link.
This is not quite a hologram, but it is a true multi-viewer solution without the need for headtracking or other dynamic tricks. It is a precomputed video stream displayed on precisely spaced, and slightly higher-than-your-living-room-tv-refresh-rate, but otherwise normal LCD panels.
Basically, the MIT guys have come up with algorithms to compute a set of three overlay transparencies, which selectively occlude or reveal certain pixels when viewed from certain angles due to parallax, such that one of many possible perspective images of a scene is produced depending on the angle from which this stack of overlays is viewed.
The part they seem most proud of is that because these different perspective views are all of the same scene, many of the pixels are the same color from one perspective to another, so they only need to concentrate their parallax trick on making a select few pixels vary by angle, thus reducing the complexity of the problem to the point where it can actually be realized with consumer resolution LCD panels and attainable data rates.
Think of this like an integral display: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_imaging#Description
Except that instead of using microlenses to bend the rays, they are using the layered screens to produce virtually bent rays. The high FPS is because they can only produce one set of virtually bent rays for any one frame, so they need as many frames as they want points of view. IOW what integral displays need in extra pixels this display needs in extra frames.
To put it another way, this is to integral what parallax is to lenticular.
Actually this makes 3D not suck. This is not at all like the 3D you've seen in your "games, movies and books/comics", this really is more like the 3D you see in real life.
That actually makes it suck more.
Don't get me wrong, the research is nice, and I'm sure there are tons of really good uses for such a thing. As a monitor for games and movies, it's a horrible idea. I don't want parallax. The last thing I want is to be sitting in a theater and missing part of the movie because of the location I chose to sit in. Or playing a game and having to constantly move my head to see things.
You know, you have a point regarding movies, I hadn't thought of that. However your point is invalid re:games. The only thing you achieve by flattening a game into 2D is that now you have to move your character to see occluded things, whereas the multiscopic 3D gives you the additional option of moving your head instead of your character, which can be a severe advantage when aiming (ie. you don't have to un-aim to look around).
The company website is scant on details of their technology, but it's obvious that a different implementation is used and my guess from what they do say is that it's a lenticular device that only generates horizontal parallax. In that case, try tilting your head 90 degrees to the side and you'll lose depth perception, whereas this wouldn't be the case for the tensor display mentioned in the article. It might not be that important of an issue, until you want to lie down on a couch and watch a 3D program on TV...
Hey, how about a Modern Warfare game with this tech. Now when you peer around a corner, and the other guy snipes you, your real head explodes! Yeah!
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
This is really a significant breakthrough. I mean good looking, glasses free 3D (please look at the video) which means MULTIPLE SIMULTANEOUS VIEWERS using CHEAP components. The only difficulty is the compute power requirement is a little high but that's nothing that won't be solved quickly thanks to Dr. Moore. (I think they are also able to use GPUs so massive cheap parallelism can overwhelm the problem).
A previous poster brought up the good point that it wasn't clear if the scene was pre-rendered. If/when it can be done on the fly (just a matter of CPU power), think of the applications. CAD, GAMES!
In 10 years (or less hopefully) we should have really large (80") true 3D displays that a bunch of people can stand around and touch (like what those guys in Perceptive Pixel, recently bought by Microsoft*, do). Talk about science fiction.
I actually submitted this story a day or two ago but I didn't understand how it worked (and still really don't get it, the math is beyond me). Anyway I'm glad it's getting the attention it deserves.
*Let's hope that Microsoft doesn't kill it, or use the patents it acquired to block progress.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The camera that films video for this display is a light-field camera: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-field_camera
Surprisingly they're already being sold to mere mortals, but those are early models that are not mature enough to be used for video production (the Lytro is for consumers but can only take pictures, the Raytrix can take video but is for industrial applications).
In the meantime while these cameras mature, any way you can turn imagery into 3D models is fair game, maybe a wide-angle high resolution Kinect, or interpolation from two normal cameras (it's a bit more complex than interpolation but you get the idea), or mere image recognition a la gimmicky 2D-to-3D conversion, etc.
No, this effectively broadcasts many views of the image through the entire range. Any viewer at any valid angle within the field of view should see a properly tracked perspective.
Let me know when they develop a walk-around 3d display that multiple people can look at simultaneously and each see the correct view from their position.
Just letting you know that MIT have developed a prototype for a walk-around 3d display that multiple people can look at simultaneously and each see the correct view from their position.
Here's a link to the summary on slashdot http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/12/07/12/2225233/mit-develops-holographic-glasses-free-3d-tv
Make sure you read the article or some of the comments so you don't confuse it with a head tracking version and post stupid comments like this retard: http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2975701&cid=40634291