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Science

Crystal Technology and 3D TV 68

Posted by CmdrTaco from the immersive-head-dunk dept.
deprecated writes "the journal of the american chemical society is running a story on a new crystal technology that could enable 3D-projection television and bring optical computing to consumers sooner. apparently the crystals are able to behave as both a solid and a liquid. neat."
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Crystal Technology and 3D TV More

Crystal Technology and 3D TV

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  • Where exactally is the article at? I don't see it in this journal.

  • Story is a repeat. (Score:2, Informative)

    by sanermind ( 512885 )
    [slashdot.org]
    Where have I heard this before?

  • Finally!! (Score:3, Funny)

    by glwtta ( 532858 ) on Sunday March 31, 2002 @11:21AM (#3260605) Homepage
    It's 2002 - 3D projection is waaaay overdue!

    Oh, and while we are on the subject - where the hell is my flying car?

  • The long path to my living room (Score:5, Insightful)

    by KFury ( 19522 ) on Sunday March 31, 2002 @11:21AM (#3260606) Homepage
    I'd be interested in seeing if this goes anyhwere. The article is pretty light on tech and detail, and smacks of those 'terabyte in a sugarcube' articles. It doesn't really give detail on how 'shaping light' can be used for a 3-D TV, or what any of the constraining statistics actually are.

    I'd love to see this kind of thing be a reality, but this reads like a small-scale experiment that a reporter caught wind of and extrapolated into a world-changing invention...
    • "apparently the crystals are able to behave as both a solid and a liquid. neat." - I thought this was what's generally termed liquid crystal - ie not new at all - someone correct me if I'm wrong though.

  • immersive 3D TV, and... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ralian ( 127441 ) on Sunday March 31, 2002 @11:22AM (#3260612) Homepage
    guess what, immersive 3D ads.
  • I wonder how long the crystals retain their dual-phase properties. Will your 3D-TV work for weeks? months? years? forever? Remains to be seen...

  • Wow that's neat... (Score:5, Informative)

    by aozilla ( 133143 ) on Sunday March 31, 2002 @11:23AM (#3260618) Homepage
    I wonder how it compares to this [slashdot.org].

  • passes the porn test... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 31, 2002 @11:26AM (#3260630)

    ...passes the Porn Test (as developed by some fellow Slashdotter whose handle I forget).

    Basically, the Porn Test says that unless a communications technology helps the dissemination of porn, it will fail. The applications of 3DTV to the adult entertainment industry are obvious, so the technology is bound to succeed.HDTV on the other hand (for instance) is much less useful, as most porn-watchers are too (ahem) busy to notice the higher resolution. So hold off with the $ until you see 3DTVs in Future Shop.

    • HDTV on the other hand (for instance) is much less useful, as most porn-watchers are too (ahem) busy to notice the higher resolution

      Or maybee its because HDTV reveals all the blemishes, and the garish amounts of makeup used to cover it up to a level of detail that the human eye normally wouldn't pick up. While Cindy Crawford's mole is considered a "beauty mark", I'm sure many porn stars have less than flattering blemishes.

  • Much more than just TV (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bowfinger ( 559430 ) on Sunday March 31, 2002 @11:34AM (#3260660)
    From the article:

    In addition to the possibility of 3-D TV, the solid-crystal molecules could act as ultrafast switches in optical computers. Stacked in a cube several inches high, they could provide unprecedented storage potential, perhaps many billion times that of current devices. Speed of access would prove dramatically faster than is possible with current computer designs.

    Seems like this is a much more significant application than fancier television. We can't even get any momentum behind HDTV, and that technology has been available for years. What are the odds of getting any real progress on 3D-TV in the next 20 years? (Unless this stuff can make hands-on porn - then look for it in Best Buy by Christmas.)

    On the other hand, optical switching and high-capacity storage could deliver practical benefits much more quickly. If this is more than another April-fools claim, I would look for the first developments there.

  • Help me, Obi wan Kenobi
    You're my only hope to move THESE USED CARS DIRECT TO YOU at LOW LOW PRICES!

    hurry now!

  • liquid crystals? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Scrameustache ( 459504 ) on Sunday March 31, 2002 @11:36AM (#3260665) Homepage Journal
    apparently the crystals are able to behave as both a solid and a liquid. neat."

    WOW! This is revolutionary! This could create such incredible technologies as digital watches and even colour Liquid Crystal Displays! This is new and exciting! Never heard of this before! ;-) Imagine, we could make computer screen that would be flat...or even small portable computing devices with coulour displays...maybe even videogames that could fit in your pockets!

    The futur is now indeed!

    (Ok, ok, I'll stop now...)

  • Whee! (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Yes! Oprah now officially in-your-face!

    Thank you technology!
  • "Save us, Ben Kenobi, you're our only hope...."
  • This could give a new meaning to a POPUP advertisement :D

  • This is s00 exciting, can you imagine Virtua Fighter in a 3d environment? Or...Super Smash Brother M3l33?

    of course the medical benefits are enourmous, you can completely see where specific t00ls exist in 3 space.

    and yet, it seems that James Bond and MI6 already have this technology (The World Is Not Enough) (g00d 0ld Q)

  • Idea doesn't make much sense... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by pseudofrog ( 570061 ) on Sunday March 31, 2002 @12:44PM (#3260859)
    Aside from being a neat novelty, is there any practical value to this concept? With the TV being in 3d, I don't think the brain would correctly put into perspective how large the filmed area is unless it happened to be the size of your TV. I seriously doubt this will even match your current TV experience. And with the lack of shows or movies that use 3d glasses, maybe people just don't care about watching shows in 3d. Aw well...I could be wrong... Matt
  • apparently the crystals are able to behave as both a solid and a liquid. neat

    Kinda as if they... ...were... ...some kind of crystal that were.. ..liquid. A Liquid... ...Crystal, if you will. Well, this seems like some revolutionary technology to me.

  • How this applies to holograms (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ThesQuid ( 86789 ) <a987&mac,com> on Sunday March 31, 2002 @02:04PM (#3261132) Journal
    This is really stupendous news. A hologram is, for all intents and purposes, just a pattern of light and dark bands on a piece of film. Since they've been able to create these patterns on demand at the molecular level (which is necessary because of the size of the visible wavelengths of light), you essentially get a computer generated hologram. Coupled with the switching speeds they are speaking of (billionths of a second) you could easily make fully immersive displays from this. (holodeck anyone? Reminds me of the walls of the houses in Fahrenheit 451).
    Only problem is, the processing power needed for such things is enourmous. They'll have to first use this technology in the back-end processors to get the necessary oomph to be able to produce killer apps like immersive tv and such. It'll be an interesting chicken-and-egg problem for them.

    No to speak of what kind of camera could make such full motion 360 holograms? I didn't see mention that the crystals also could act as sensors....such a thing would be needed unless you want ALL your programming to be computer-generated images. (now there's an idea...)
    • Now, we just need to figure out how to make a force field like technology so we can interact with the images. Incidentally, I always find it curious that I hear about all sorts of sci fi technology like antimatter, transporters and holograms; but I have never seen anything at all about one of the most fundimental sci fi technologies...the force field. Anyone have any idea as to whether or not people are working toward such technology?
  • New revolutionary crystal, simply heat it and it melts! ;-)

  • Holographic printer (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Chayce ( 199487 ) on Sunday March 31, 2002 @02:07PM (#3261154) Journal
    If these crystals do what they claim, although a holographic monitor may be a few years off, a printer that prints 3D images onto holograhic paper may be in stores quickly, all you need is to be able to give every square millimeter, the light it recieves from the virtual object and apply a reference beam thats out of phase. Then we can have holographic pictures taken by a digital cameras using sterioscopic setup, put through a simple 3D extrapolation program. Oh well my spelling sucks, but you get the point.

    --I like replies much more than I like Karma
  • This technology is pretty impressive, and if it does enable 3D television, then I'm just wondering how exactly we'd record video to be displayed using this technology. I know it'll probably work for 3D computer generated videos because you can just send it the raw data, but how exactly do you film something in real life so that viewer can walk around the object and see it from a different angle? Or am I not understanding this correctly?
    • Well, there was some technology that I saw a while back that would film it from many (100+) different angles and composite the completed film into a computer animation. However, this was very crude and probably will be for the forseeable future. So the only practical way to create 3d films will to go the completely computer-generated route.

  • Uhh, people - 3DTV is already avaliable (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Check out the 3D monitors at www.dti3d.com. Yeah, these crystals sound cool, and the possibilities for optical computing are amazing, but don't get too excited over 3D tv/monitors, 'cuz they're already around

  • 3dtv? (Score:1)

    by vanyel ( 28049 )
    How does shaping the light source help with 3dtv? To achieve 3d imagery, you have to get different signals to each eye of each member of the audience. I suppose you could do it with a spherical crystal of some sort, but the focusing optics will be "interesting" and everyone has to look at the light source. The other way is to get the beam of light to bend (reflect) in 3-d space somehow (which is how most sci-fi shows it working). Good luck! And the light source has nothing to do with that.
  • what this could do for pron! OMG!

  • Popular Mechanics 1958? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Baldrson ( 78598 ) on Sunday March 31, 2002 @04:48PM (#3261885) Homepage Journal
    new crystal technology that could enable 3D-projection television and bring optical computing to consumers sooner. apparently the crystals are able to behave as both a solid and a liquid. neat."

    Waking up bleary from Saturday night and stumbling to my computer before the first cup of coffee had taken hold, I pulled up Slashdot.

    "No," I said, "they wouldn't actually publish an article mentioning 'crystals' that 'behave as both a solid and a liquid' without mentioning 'liquid crystals' and the distinction between the two. I must have slipped a day -- it must be April 1 and they've taken advantage of my debilitated state to pull an April Fools joke. I mean -- this sounds just like something out of a 1958 Popular Mechanics article on the future in light of the revolutionary new material known as liquid crystals . That's it... the scumbags at the American Chemical Society News Service went and pulled an ancient issue of some popular rag from the archives of a venerable University, typed it in and presented it as a current article just to show how little things have actually changed in display technology over that time."

    But, no -- it is March 31 after all, Miguel A. Garcia-Garibay, who is not Glenn Brown [kent.edu], was born in 1960 and mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.

  • My grandfather had a crystal radio... it's nice to see TV finally catch up.

  • Before anyone gets excited about this stuff let me point out that I am remember the hype about HDTV and last time I checked we're all still waiting for it. Start talking to me about 3D television as soon as we are all watching HDTV.

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