Scientists Claim Breakthrough On Holographic Display

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."

Another revolutionary technology...

Another revolutionary technology that will be adopted first by the porn industry.

... for our new holographic masters!

I saw it on Star Trek, it must be true!

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huzza! an olographic tv! only with still images. oh, and not in 3d! we have those here, we call them photoframes

Re:Another revolutionary technology...

I don't understand people claiming that porn created the computing universe in 6 kilobytes.

Computers proliferated when they became cheap enough for the average person to afford (IBM PC) and useful enough for the average person to want (taxes, word processing, games, etc). Sure, some people probably bought Internet service primarily to access porn, but I don't think that had much effect on the overall computer boom. Computers boomed like cars boomed: someone made it cheap and people saw everyday uses for them.

Now, one might make an argument about porn boosting search engines (look at graphs of popular terms over time), but certainly not the whole shebang.

Isn't particularly suited for 3d images

Other than that small issue, sounds like a winner.

Re:Isn't particularly suited for 3d images

See my sig...

Boo!

Other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?

Too soon!

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Well, in the 3 minutes it takes to change images, just imagine you've walked around to a different side, then the picture can show that. Voila!

Every couple of minutes?

It can only update every couple of minutes? Not to worry, Lucas will stretch out Episode XXIV accordingly.

Dude

R2-D2 had this shit down a long time ago.

Who?

Who is this Dr. Justin Lawrence and why is he being cited as the authoritative naysayer for this technology? He doesn't seem to have any reasons to be unimpressed other than this cliche:

"It's one thing to demonstrate something in a lab but it's another thing to be able to produce it cheaply and efficiently enough to distribute it to the mass market," Lawrence said.

Refresh Rates

If it can only refresh every few minutes, it'd be perfect for airing CSPAN, right? I mean, it's not like Congress moves very fast - you really don't need a refresh rate measured in Hz.

And if they got it in 3D... It'd be just like you're there!

Re:Refresh Rates

> And if they got it in 3D... It'd be just like you're there!

But why would you want to be?

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And i'ts attitudes like that that'll keep this technology from taking off!

MIT Media Lab has been doing holoTV for 15 years

They had live TV, but small images. Unfortunately the head investigator Steve Benten died a few years ago.

HoloTV?

"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...
http://people.csail.mit.edu/wojciech/3DTV/index.html [mit.edu] ...it is neither of the above.

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.

DNF?

Is this the technology that 3D Realms has been waiting for by delaying Duke Nukem Forever by this long? When it finally does come out, it's going to be awesome!!!!

AGAIN!?

ANOTHER breakthrough!? I'm thrilled!
seriously, how often have we read about holo-TV breakthroughs within the last - say - 15 years?
I stopped believing, although I'd love such technology...

sweet

thats about 0.0056 frames per second

still better than crysis on my rig

Old news

This news is from February.

More detail here...
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/feb08/5995 [ieee.org]

Misunderstandings and Disbeliefs

" 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."

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.

I can't wait....

It's going to be awesome for my kids, watching 3D movies in our fusion-powered, flying family sedan running a light-weight, modular version of Windows.

And once I get home, I'll fire up my commercially viable Linux desktop and look at watch Netflix streaming Netflix movies, eating some Taco Bell (It will be the only "restaurant" left after the earthquake)

Interesting, but what about filming?

The display is only half the problem for a holographic "TV." You also have to have a holographic "camera", and those are not easy, especially since they require LASER light. I can't see it being safe for humans to "film" them with three lasers simultaneously (you need Red, Green, and Blue) that are intense enough to create the interferograms with enough contrast and to override background light.

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But if you use the machine about 5,000 times would the cost of 5,000 lap dances be a lot less then the holographic machine?

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That's like saying you'd rather play Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed instead of driving a real Porsche because you don't risk getting a speeding ticket.

I know we were lacking a car analogy somewhere.