Does anybody know when the first window manager with a wharf was created? I don't know my window manager history very well, but I know the concept has at least been around since WindowMaker and AfterStep, though I'm sure it goes back further than that.
Hmm, "Windows Future Storage". I can see it now... "Well, I had my paper before I wrote it, but when I tried looking for it, I couldn't find it, and then when I wrote it, my computer deleted it"
The low quality holograms that you find in stores are usually exactly that, low quality. A high quality, properly lit hologram can be absolutely breathtaking. I've seen a number of holograms (ironically, at the MIT Museum) that, were it not for their illumination, would have looked real: solid and sharp. One of my favorites was a hologram of a telescope and the night sky. Yes, the telescope worked. You could stand in the right place and look through the holographic telescope and you would see exactly what you would expect to see, had the telescope been real. I even ducked once because I turned to look at a hologram as I was walking by and thought I was going to run in to it. Granted, these were all static holograms, and I don't know how they are achieving/plan to achieve moving holograms (and high quality systems will probably be prohibitively expensive at first).
The LCD overlay is a completely different approach. It is not holographic and does not claim to be. The "two cameras [that] track eye movement" are a vast improvement over previous display technology that uses this same approach, but requires the user to remain stationary (see 3D LCD Display though the technology has been around for a while). And, no, obviously this doesn't work for multiple users because it's targetting the location of a single user.
3D display technology is cool, but still young. The progress that has been made over the past two or three years alone is amazing. Give it a year or two more in the lab, and I bet that it will start having real impact on the world.
This would be true if they were using a more complete haptic interface, but the PHANToM is a "single point" device, so to speak. It is a stylus on the end of an arm, as opposed to a glove which would give tactile feedback over one's entire hand (the sensation from a PHANToM is cool, a full glove would be absolutely astounding). The network-related difficulties that arise in this experiment are due primarily to latency, similar to how many head-tracking devices will nausiate a user after a lot of use, except that, in this case, latency is due to the network and will cause the simulation to feel unnatural (and possibly nausiating, if the simulation is immersive enough, which it probably isn't in this case).
However, to give a sense of how interesting even a single point device like the PHANToM can be, I have a story. Last time I played with a PHANToM, the demonstrator had loaded a model of a goblet that was capped off on the top. It was incredibly amusing to put the stylus above the virtual goblet and let go of it. It would drop until it got to the cap of the goblet, and then it would stop, and physically dangle there in mid-air. You could then nudge it until it moved off the edge of the virtual goblet, and it would then commence falling until it hit the physical table.
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Does anybody know when the first window manager with a wharf was created? I don't know my window manager history very well, but I know the concept has at least been around since WindowMaker and AfterStep, though I'm sure it goes back further than that.
Hmm, "Windows Future Storage". I can see it now... "Well, I had my paper before I wrote it, but when I tried looking for it, I couldn't find it, and then when I wrote it, my computer deleted it"
They're working on both specialized LCD displays and actual holographic displays (and all of the problems entailed)
The LCD overlay is a completely different approach. It is not holographic and does not claim to be. The "two cameras [that] track eye movement" are a vast improvement over previous display technology that uses this same approach, but requires the user to remain stationary (see 3D LCD Display though the technology has been around for a while). And, no, obviously this doesn't work for multiple users because it's targetting the location of a single user.
3D display technology is cool, but still young. The progress that has been made over the past two or three years alone is amazing. Give it a year or two more in the lab, and I bet that it will start having real impact on the world.
This would be true if they were using a more complete haptic interface, but the PHANToM is a "single point" device, so to speak. It is a stylus on the end of an arm, as opposed to a glove which would give tactile feedback over one's entire hand (the sensation from a PHANToM is cool, a full glove would be absolutely astounding). The network-related difficulties that arise in this experiment are due primarily to latency, similar to how many head-tracking devices will nausiate a user after a lot of use, except that, in this case, latency is due to the network and will cause the simulation to feel unnatural (and possibly nausiating, if the simulation is immersive enough, which it probably isn't in this case).
However, to give a sense of how interesting even a single point device like the PHANToM can be, I have a story. Last time I played with a PHANToM, the demonstrator had loaded a model of a goblet that was capped off on the top. It was incredibly amusing to put the stylus above the virtual goblet and let go of it. It would drop until it got to the cap of the goblet, and then it would stop, and physically dangle there in mid-air. You could then nudge it until it moved off the edge of the virtual goblet, and it would then commence falling until it hit the physical table.