Many Bothans Died to Bring You This Working 3D Hologram

[Silversurfer]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... ndNwMBEiVU[/youtube]

They're calling it a 3D laser display, but I see all my holographic dreams being projected without a screen in mid-air. Now if we could only stuff it into an R2 unit.

Up until now when you saw a hologram it was probably projected onto some sort of screen. Researchers at Burton Inc. (not the snowboard company) demonstrated their True 3D display technology and the results are outstanding. Instead of using a screen, the lasers produce points of light from the plasma excitation of oxygen and nitrogen molecules in the air or water.

The lasers can create 50,000 dots-per second in mid-air at 15FPS. They are currently working on bring that up to 24-30FPS. Colors can be created by combining red, green and blue lasers. The additive color model is how your TV and computer monitor create colors. Hopefully we'll be able to watch 3D movies in actual 3D, not this fake shove-irritating-glasses-on-your-face 3D. [Diginfo]

http://gizmodo.com/5859486/many-bothans ... d-hologram" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[cybereality]

WOW!

[Dom]

Yeah man, now this is like awesome a real life mid air laser system. Good thinking from humanity-smart people to bring out and actually prototype this and in full color.

Hey cyberreality just what you and me were looking for hey.

Now burton we want it out in a few years lol and be able to change holograms to a 2d looking tv set too. I guess I will be able to marry my tv set in about 20 years.

[Okta]

This one is pretty old, i was trying to find a link to this for someone asking about holograms in another thread. Certainly something that has potential but those lasers must be very high power so there would be safety concerns to cover.

[Dom]

It still is the worlds first mid air laser system as they say. Its like the cavemans wheel to the car or wagon. If that video is from 2006 then I guess there must be something better out from them or someone, just not on youtube or the net publicly.

[PalmerTech]

This is pretty nifty, but it is not very useful for things like games or videos. You can only create depth as deep as the space you are projecting in! That said, a room where you can project holograms anywhere in the entire space would be amazing!

There really are some serious safety concerns, though. Lasers capable of ionizing air like that are in the hundreds or thousands of watt range (Depending on how tightly you focus the beam). For reference, you can cut sheets of titanium with about 250 watts.

Basically, if this tech ever develops to the point where it is eye-safe and portable, screw this whole 3D hobby, I will start building lightsabers!

[cybereality]

Well the mid-air holograms are obviously the end goal but this laser thing has little to nothing to do with actually holography. Really annoying how blogs seems to equate the terms "3D" and "Hologram" so liberally these days. But I guess it makes for a more juicy headline. Anyway, I will be satisfied with wearing glasses for the time being, and much progress is still being made with active/passive 3D, HMDs, auto-stereo, etc. with every passing month. By the time we get real holograms it might not even be the huge leap we think it will be.

[Dom]

I think the huge leap in holography mid-air laser systems will be that you will get the volume and actual color and scenery of a movie or video game out of it. Also the resolution should go up quite a bit considering a cubic area is gonna take alot more pixels but that should not be a problem and also the fact that you could put more information in an unplaceable spot with a physical tv or monitor.

I guess the transition will be in pauses of rudementary lab contraptions and not a fast mass market device that works at an unheard of realism of holographic dimension.

[BlackShark]

There really are some serious safety concerns, though. Lasers capable of ionizing air like that are in the hundreds or thousands of watt range (Depending on how tightly you focus the beam). For reference, you can cut sheets of titanium with about 250 watts.

Basically, if this tech ever develops to the point where it is eye-safe and portable, screw this whole 3D hobby, I will start building lightsabers!

Not necessarily, ionizing the air can be done with very short pulses, by concentrating all the energy of a relatively weak laser within a very short burst, you can reach energies high enough to ionize the air.

I wouldn't really be afraid by the laser beam since it's not a straight laser : the focusing and defocusing of the beam would make the laser beam harmless after a very short distance from the picture, assuming the focusing and defocusing power is strong enough (if the lens is large enough).
The one area I'm really concerned about is the focusing point where the air ionizes because it's the point where the real energy is concentrated enough to cause harm. I'm not that worried about eyes, because I believe an idiot would probably try to touch the picture with his hand first, get burned, and if he isn't drunk he would understand he shouldn't put any part of his body over the display.
I think safety for these types of displays would require some kind of user gesture detection (kinect-like) to switch the laser off if some foreign object is detected in the laser path.

If this system is further developed, it would be a nice way to do advertizing.
However there is one critical weakness with these devices : the air, being transparent, cannot perform occlusion (cannot hide something behind an other object) and I think there would be some difficulties making dark colours.

[Dom]

Yeah i was thinking the same things, but theres gotta be somehow to make a black laser light. Whats the frequecy of darkness or no light darkfield. All they need to to is figure out the frecency of it then reproduce it with laser and electronics.

There is no way a holographic laser system will make it home if its gonna burn you at all. Thats why i sugesst putting the laser behind a spread out filter and casing that disapates the heat but let the hologram have volume from the light and not a direct path from the laser.

But then you don't really need to ionize the air.

[Likay]

Displaying black in a hologram like this will cause problem since black is equal to transparent. Any light behind it would shine straight through.

[Dom]

Then if there was a volume space of black transparent cloud and all the inside helogram was focusing inside that area then you could lighen up the areas that only need to be seen, just like on a 2d set. I guess thats why in popular science they wanted to use a black shell case to effect the transparencies. If black light is transparent which all light could be considered trasnparent considering it don't consist of matter friction. Black laser would just be another pure color, like if you shown a black laser pointer it would stream a total black line.

[PalmerTech]

Black lasers are not physically possible.

And even if you were operating with pulses instead of constant wave, those power bursts are still going to be really high. Not enough to cut through stuff, but just as dangerous for your eyes, especially at the refresh rates you would want for video.

There are safety measures that could be taken, but I do not think many consumer electronics companies want to take on that risk.

[cirk2]

Black laser... Thats a good one ^^

That demonstration is quite impressive, im eager to see the 30Hz version. and to see it in real, because I think the cammera (and YT) are falsening the impression of the "image".

[Dom]

A black light can be shown on a projector, even grays, browns all the dark colors. Would'nt you just convert that into a laser light and have it shown in volumetric space. Like the black is invisible until it hits the wall on a projector, but on a laser maybe once it has the gray beside or touch it then it will stick into a holo pixel.

I don't know, but it don't sound impossible. Its kinda like how could you make a piece of paper float in mid air.

[Likay]

Not really. Black is absence of light so "black light" can never block brighter nuances and it will work the same way even in a holographic system like this. When a projector displays black on a screen it turns down the light on the related pixels. It does not send "black" light to the dark areas of the screen.
In lack of better comparisons: If you shine on a projectorscreen with a flashlight , the "black" "from" the projector will not dim the flashlight even if the projector is way stronger in lumens than the flashlight.
Therefore with holograms black by this principle will be transparent and light behind it will be visible. It's possible to project a correct image for one viewer but when there are many there will be problems with dark nuances not being opaque.