Scientists Claim Breakthrough On Holographic Display 123
SpuriousLogic writes to tell us that University of Arizona researchers claim to have broken a barrier in holographic technology by creating an updatable, three-dimensional display with memory. While the existing model is only able to update once every couple of minutes, and isn't particularly suited for 3d images, it is certainly a step in the right direction. "Peyghambarian is also optimistic that the technology could reach the market within five to ten years. He said progress towards a final product should be made much more quickly now that a rewriting method had been found. However, it is fair to say not everyone is as positive about this prospect as Peyghambarian. Lecturer in Electronic Engineering at Bangor University in Wales, Dr Justin Lawrence, told CNN small steps were always being made on technology like 3D holograms, but, he couldn't see it being ready for the market in the next ten years."
Comment removed (Score:2, Informative)
MIT Media Lab has been doing holoTV for 15 years (Score:5, Informative)
HoloTV? (Score:5, Informative)
"HoloTV" conjures up images of...
- a display much like holograms, but instead with fully moving images (and I don't mean the ones that have moving images when you change the viewing angle)
- a holodeck, but confined to the 'space' of a TV.
Benton et al (mostly et al) did great work, but... ...it is neither of the above.
http://people.csail.mit.edu/wojciech/3DTV/index.html [mit.edu]
A lenticular display is cool, but still depends a lot on the viewing angle, very precise registration, etc.
True '3D TV' is quite a long ways out as of yet.. there are plenty of existing and research methods, but all of them have their caveats that make them nowhere near '3D TV' a la "everything actually looks 3D, from any angle, without special glasses required, and without the surfaces appearing translucent, and with no more extreme requirements than a very high-end regular TV now".
red/blue | red/green methods - no color accuracy, need glasses, not actually 3D (fixed viewpoint)
chromadepth - no color accuracy, need glasses, not actually 3D (fixed viewpoint)
shutter glasses - need glasses (dur), not actually 3D (fixed viewpoint)
polarization - need glasses, not actually 3D (fixed viewpoint)
VR glasses - need the big VR goggles.
Lenticular displays - limited viewing angles, not actually 3D (multiple fixed viewpoints - typically on the horizontal plane, MIT's work has the vertical plane covered a bit as well)
Tracking displays - limited viewing angles and, moreover, limited number of viewers (just one.. the person being tracked. Also not really 3D (fixed viewpoints, but with greater 'fluidity' between viewing angles; no actual depth cues (could be combined with a 'glasses' method to overcome this limitation, however). In theory extensible to spherical displays to provide a - albeit awkward - free-viewpoint display).
Collated displays / array of displays - expensive, limited viewing angles (not as limited as lenticular, but if you look at the side of the array of displays, you're not going to see a whole lot), surfaces appear translucent, color inaccurate the deeper 'in' you look.
Spinning surface displays (in various forms) - noisy (even with the spinning surface encased and usually vacuum-sealed; for resistance purposes as well), flickery, surfaces tend to appear translucent although some level of opacity can be attained.
Making the air explode in gorgeous bursts of luminosity - loud. very, very loud.. zero color, not even greyscale; presuming technique perfected to at least allow greyscale (minor vs major bursts, or frequency bursts), surfaces will still appear translucent.
Of all of the above, Lenticular displays are the most commercially successful *right now*, and they're still not mainstream; that might change as more and more 3D movies come out and they start getting stuck on Blu-Ray/whatever, though.
I get the feeling I missed one, but it's likely to have some of the other usual drawbacks.
Overall, VR goggles give the best experience as long as the content is actually 3D.. but people don't like wearing even the little polarized glasses, nevermind a VR headset.
--
On top of that, though... shooting a movie in a stereoscopic format (glasses) is difficult enough; a lot of movie shots only really 'work' from a single angle - think one actor punching another... move a little right/left and it becomes a lot easier to tell that the guy never actually hit him; gets worse when you add in the original viewing angle and you get full 3D depth cues. That's not to mention any effects that have to get replicated in stereo (double the work; easy if it's a 3D feature film, not so easy if it's live-action and some poor artist has to rotoscope an actor's hair not once, but twice, and with stereoscopic cohesion.
And that's just stereo.. that's not even the common concept of 3D (cameras all around), nevermind full 3D (being able to look all the way around, instead of just orbiting the scene of interest).
No.. it'll be a long, long while more before 'HoloTV' is something we can all talk about the way we did about flatscreen TVs several years back.
Re:Who? (Score:1, Informative)
http://www.eng.bangor.ac.uk/Staff/justin_lawrence.php
http://arrow.dit.ie/scienmas/30/
Anyone who has successfully published a peer-reviewed doctoral dissertation on "optical amplification and lasing in conjugated polymers and novel semiconducting dendrimers and fabrication of wavelength scale microstructure by soft lithography" has my complete respect.
Old news (Score:4, Informative)
This news is from February.
More detail here...
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/feb08/5995 [ieee.org]
Misunderstandings and Disbeliefs (Score:5, Informative)
That guy is a prick and a true disbeliever.
I think it has been widely misunderstood what exactly this breakthrough is. It is not yet another display with a fast-rotating spiral in the center, or a box filled with smoke and crossing beams form a 3D picture.
No. What this is, is basically a "normal" hologram, the kind you have as small stickers on CCs or (ugh) EULAs, or the kind you hang on your wall if you're so inclined, just erasable. It's basically the CD-RW of holograms. With that technology, if they can 'erase' and 'write' images fast enough (fast enough for let's say 25fps), we finally can have a holographic display.
Re:Refresh Rates (Score:3, Informative)
If it can only refresh every few minutes, it'd be perfect for airing CSPAN, right?
Congress will ban it as the 2-D left-right paradigm suits their purposes quite well.