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Displays Technology

HoloVizio 3D, Holodeck 1.0 to Some, Makes Its Debut 127

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the getting-there dept.
TaeKwonDood writes to tell us that another step towards Star Trek's Holodeck technology has been taken with the advent of HoloVizio 3D. Allowing users to see and manipulate objects in 3D without the assistance of goggles, this distributed system shows a lot of promise. "The HoloVizio is a 3-D screen that will allow designers to visualize true 3-D models of cars, engines or components. Better yet, gesture recognition means that observers can manipulate the models by waving their hands in front of the screen. The function offers enormous scope for collaboration across the globe."
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HoloVizio 3D, Holodeck 1.0 to Some, Makes Its Debut More

HoloVizio 3D, Holodeck 1.0 to Some, Makes Its Debut

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  • models! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 09, 2008 @03:10PM (#23714745)
    The HoloVizio is a 3-D screen that will allow designers to visualize true 3-D models

    I'd like to order up one Cindy Crawford, one of the brunette woman from the Mercury ads, and one of that hot chick in Accounting.

    of cars, engines or components.

    Oh.

    • ne of the brunette woman from the Mercury ads,
      Sounds like Mercury is on your list as well...

    • Re:models! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Red Alastor ( 742410 ) on Monday June 09, 2008 @03:32PM (#23715161)
      I always thought that holodecks probably weren't used to talk to historical figures and characters from novels written in the 20th century. Cleaning the holodeck must be the suckiest job on the Enterprise.

      • Re:models! (Score:5, Funny)

        by Dice ( 109560 ) on Monday June 09, 2008 @03:51PM (#23715437)
        Damnit, Barclay!! Again?!

      • Come! (Score:3, Funny)

        by MrSteveSD ( 801820 )
        No jokes about Captain Picard saying "Come!". Okay? :)

        • OK. (Score:2, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward
          "Make it so baby. Uh yeah. Right there baby. Engage ENGAAAGGGE.

      • Wiimote + Lightsabers! (Score:4, Interesting)

        by StCredZero ( 169093 ) on Monday June 09, 2008 @04:27PM (#23715929)
        Heck with all that Star Trek sex rubbish! The true geek-gasm these things should give you is the potential for the Ultimate Star Wars Lightsaber game! Construct something like the Wiimote controller, but with lightsaber designs from the Star Wars movies. Throw in some gesture recognition for some force powers, and you have the ultimate geek game. Imagine it -- immersive 3D effects with physics, you holding a lightsaber, or gesturing to telekinetically deflect objects.

        Dave & Busters would make a killing on those! I wonder how many Jedi would show up in costume robes?
      • I'm sure it featured some sort of automated fluid capture and disposal. It did use forcefields for everything, after all.

        If the first one didn't feature that, you can sure bet version 2.0 did!
      • It's been said that the holodeck technology shares a lot in common with transporter/replicator tech, and as a result can produce real food and dispose of "waste" itself.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Trashman ( 3003 )


      one of the brunette woman from the Mercury ads, and one of that hot chick in Accounting.

      Ah, Jill Wagner [imdb.com] ...not bad. I'll take 1 of her and a Jackie Guerrido [google.com].

    • Comic Book Guy: "And I would like an hour on the holodeck with Seven of Nine."
    • You're referring to Jill. Her name is mentioned in one of the commercials.

      Feel free to embarrass me appropriately for knowing that factoid.

  • Isn't it just a multitouch flat panel? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by PC and Sony Fanboy ( 1248258 ) on Monday June 09, 2008 @03:13PM (#23714785) Journal
    Well, this looks interesting, but isn't it just a multitouch 3D flat panel? .. sure, you don't touch the screen directly, but it doesn't seem to be projecting anything.

    Also, it sounds kinda lame...

    CRS4 also developed rendering and visualisation software that may reveal the artistic secrets of the great masters, like Michelangelo. A scan of his famous David revealed that the eyes diverge.
    You can see the same effects if you look at a picture taken from the right angle. It isn't revolutionary, it sounds an awful lot like an awful lot of hype!

    • Re:Isn't it just a multitouch flat panel? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by mikael ( 484 ) on Monday June 09, 2008 @03:19PM (#23714913)
      Depends upon the way the system is working. Does it track the position of a single person and adjusts the view accordingly? Or are there multiple GPU's rendering the scene from different angles and having these different views projected in different directions using vertically aligned lenses? In the latter case, projecting a view "outwards" should be possible. It certainly looks the case in the gears video [scientificblogging.com]

      I wonder if this technology would scale into a laptop display?

      • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        From TFA:

        The researchers based the display component on innovative holographic techniques that can present, at natural human interaction scale, realistic animated 3-D images simultaneously to an unlimited number of freely moving viewers.

        The upshot is that users do not need goggles, and the 3-D image is maintained as they move about - both in contrast with early attempts at holographic displays. But the real star of the Coherent project is not simply the display. The researchers made exciting advances in ena

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mikael ( 484 )
          Thanks for that piece of information. Some more pieces from gizmodo: [gizmodo.com]

          * 3DConverter - Create 3D images and videos from 2D image sequences - computer generated or camera images.

          This software reads your image sequences, camera setup, and the geometry specification of the HoloVizio device to be used, and outputs an AVI file that can be played on the HoloVizio in real-time using HoloPlayer. To use this method, you need an image / video sequence that shows your object from at least 60 different directions (more vi

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Yeah, it looks like it's just head tracking. Johnny Chung Lee already did that with the Wii. (http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/) Sure, I bet it looks pretty good compared to fixed-perspective displays, but there's no holo-anything involved at all.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tambo ( 310170 )
      Well, this looks interesting, but isn't it just a multitouch 3D flat panel? .. sure, you don't touch the screen directly, but it doesn't seem to be projecting anything.

      There's that, yes.

      There's also the fact that this is still just a monitor, which projects images. The Holodeck, on the other hand, didn't generate images of any kind - it created fully materialized objects - including people! - and also created light sources, blah blah blah.

      Holodeck, my ass. This is just another stupid monitor. C'mon, people,

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by somersault ( 912633 )
        It's quite weird how unenthusiastic people here are. I mean 10 years ago this would have made proper geeks cream their pants in excitement, but these days it's all about the criticism!? It's one step on the ladder to a holodeck, what's the deal with complaining all the time? You really expect us to generate the appropriate deflector and teleporter tech to do a 'real' holodeck with no intermediate steps between our current pure-2D displays? I didn't even think that we'd be able to make the type of display th
        • We have a plasma machine that can create a dot of plasma in 3d shapes in mid air.

          We have a screen that projects on vapor.

          We have altered a game console to track your head and create a 3d illusion. Both the Wii and the PS3 (one with IR detector, other with camera).

          We have multi-input touch screens.

          We have two different types of omni directional treadmills.


          We have everything we need for full 3d screen and this doesn't seem useful or a step forward at all honestly. It seems done before, and bett
          • Do you have a link to the plasma thing?

            Again, have you even looked at how this thing is working? It's not 'done before', and is a step in the right direction. It's not always going to be practical to have a 3D plasma holo-projector, sometimes you'll just want to have a fake window or 3D picture frame without having to use a headset, and this is a way to accomplish that, and is probably a lot closer to being marketable than any other 3D tech, since it simply uses current projector technology, but in a novel
      • Yes a stupid monitor, but no. You still need to look at the screen. Which sucks. But it is not so much about rendering different images and offering each eye a single one as it is a device that renders focussed dots of light into the air. It requires quite some power to do that actually. For your info the only display that doesn't require looking onto a screen directly (and which still looks cool) is the heliodisplay from http://www.io2technology.com/ [io2technology.com] but it is not 3D

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by syousef ( 465911 )
      Well, this looks interesting, but isn't it just a multitouch 3D flat panel?

      Only if by 3D panel you mean slashvertisement.

    • Well, this looks interesting, but isn't it just a multitouch 3D flat panel?

      You say that as if you build these all the time. If you watch the video then in no way does it seem 'lame'.. it's highly impressive. Obviously you'd need an even more impressive GPU to render everything from all the different angles though (I'm assuming that has to be done at least, I didn't see any useful info on the actual display tech in TFA). If that is the case, 3D pre-rendered movies could be done, but real-time 3D games would need a monster system..

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Prune ( 557140 )
      It is very different from the standard autostereoscopic 3D monitors. One look at their website would have made that obvious: http://holografika.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=29&Itemid=63 [holografika.com]

  • Oblig. (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 09, 2008 @03:13PM (#23714795)
    Allowing users to see and manipulate objects in 3D without the assistance of goggles...

    You mean these 3D goggles I bought for HoloVizio - they do nothing?

  • Scoping Gestures. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by camperdave ( 969942 ) on Monday June 09, 2008 @03:15PM (#23714835) Journal
    The function offers enormous scope for collaboration across the globe.

    It looks like they need enormous scopes to just display the images, let alone collaberate. As for that guy "manipulating" the Rubic's cube... well, let's just say the gesture recognition needs a lot of work. It looked a lot like he was just following the movements of the cube, rather than the other way around.

  • 2D presentation of 3D screen (Score:4, Funny)

    by MyNymWasTaken ( 879908 ) on Monday June 09, 2008 @03:22PM (#23714981)
    The video presentation was hilarious. It's like the cooking shows on TV where they are talking about how good the food smells. Relevant information is lost in the presentation.

    Look - a 3D screen! Doesn't it look amazing?

    It looks exactly like everything else in the 2D medium that it is being presented in.
  • I don't know about you, but this looks like a spruced up version of Johnny Chung Lee's head tracking experiment [cmu.edu] with a guy pretending to motion-sync with the object moving on the screen. I don't think it can truly be validated without a lot of first-hand witnesses.
    • He just sucks at moving it. He'd probably be crap with an eyeToy as well.. would help if he either kept his hands to the edges and didn't try to move so quick.. looked a bit like it was detecting directional movement over the black lines.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ATMD ( 986401 )
      I'll second that.

      Especially when the only details given for how it works are "advanced holographic techniques" or whatever the quote was. I smell bullshit.

  • Holodeck or "Minority Report" (Score:3, Informative)

    by mykepredko ( 40154 ) on Monday June 09, 2008 @03:25PM (#23715025) Homepage
    Looking at the demo video (comment below) and reading TFA, it looked more like a gesture response on a 2D screen than anything approaching a holodeck. More like Tom Cruise's display selection used in "Minority Report"

    In any case, the guy in the video looked like he was following the movement of the Rubic's cube, not guiding it. If you were a VC, I would suggest investigating this a lot more - it seems to be more vapourware than something that's ready for prime time.

    myke
    • Touching and gestures shouldn't be focused on so much--that technology is already perfect in the hands of Apple, Microsoft, and the university research that preceded them. I think what's really important is that we now have a video screen that is capable of displaying 3D images without any glasses used, like those old museum displays that had to be etched with lasers in obscure materials. (I think I saw a beaver once that accomplished this same effect.) Bugs or even vapourware in touch stuff are totally acc

    • If you were a VC, I would suggest investigating this a lot more - it seems to be more vapourware than something that's ready for prime time.

      That may be putting it lightly. Their site [holografika.com] makes rather grandiose claims, that the screen generates a high-quality, full-color image with full depth-information, viewable from any angle by an unlimited number of viewers (i.e.: it's not just using motion tracking to simulate 3D for the one viewer). If true, this would be hugely significant!

      However, their "explanation [holografika.com]" of the technology is rather... vague. Once you strip out all the trite market-speak and "trying to sounds scientific" techno-babble, you'

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fm6 ( 162816 )
      Everybody here is a trekkie, so of course it's a Holodeck. Never mind that it's not fully immersive, and can't simulate actual physical objects.

  • I'm all for 3D displays (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Wavebreak ( 1256876 ) on Monday June 09, 2008 @03:30PM (#23715111)
    But this article is light on the details. How does it work, what will it cost, when will it be available, is it even viable for mass production? 3D displays have been "any day now" for years, gonna need convincing to believe that this one's anything other than just another one of the numerous attempts that are hyped all over the place but never actually amount to anything.

    Hell, I'd be happy with head tracking, I mean come on, it's been demonstrated by some guy using a bloody wii remote, why can't we even get a proper working implementation of that for games and 3d modeling software and whatnot?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Prune ( 557140 )
      3D displays have been on sale for years already. I have no idea what in the hell you mean "any day now". How do they not "amount to anything"? I've used autostereoscopic 3D displays from different companies at SIGGRAPH years ago, versions of commercial products, and they work just fine. Your rant is very ill-informed.

  • Holodeck 1.0? (Score:4, Funny)

    by dr_wheel ( 671305 ) on Monday June 09, 2008 @03:36PM (#23715221)
    ...more like Holodeck 0.01.

    When I can spray a truffle-shuffling Chunk with my tommy gun, then we'll start talking about release candidates.
  • I think you mean Shi 'Ar Danger Room technology(though I'm sure someone else had this idea before the X-Men)

  • We're not even at the goggles stage yet (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MrSteveSD ( 801820 ) on Monday June 09, 2008 @03:51PM (#23715433)
    I've been waiting some 20 years for home virtual reality and yet I still can't go into a shop and buy an immersive virtual reality games system or even a decent Head Mounted Display that has anything like human field of view. I'd like to be able to walk around games like Oblivion and look up at a huge castle by tilting my head back, giving me a real sense of how small I am in the world. I could buy a HMD now, but the FOV is like tunnel vision and so is hardly immersive. In fact FOV rather than stereo viewing is probably the most important thing for immersion since your binocular vision breaks down quite quickly over distance.

    I wonder how many more years we are going to have to wait. It's really annoying since we have the computer power now (Compared to the Dactyl Nightmare cube graphics days) , but the visual hardware is lagging far behind and there doesn't seem to be much will to bring VR to the masses.
    • Close your eyes. Now imagine that you are on the balcony of mountaintop villa in Italy. The scenery is breathtaking-- the snowcapped peaks off in the distance, the hustle of the beautiful, palm-tree-lined streets below. The ocean pounding the cliffs to the west. Standing beside you is Cindy Crawford. She's pulls your head toward her, and kisses you full on the mouth, reminding you that you need to be looking at her and not the village... Now let your imagination carry you away.

      There. Home virtual reali
    • I've been waiting 35 years for working X-Ray glasses. :-(
    • TFA should have linked to this to stop people whining about the lack of description of how this works. Most people are accusing it of vapourware just because they can't understand how something like that would even work! I had thought that it was to do with pixels that shone out different colours at different angles, but it's a bit more complicated than that.. I still don't understand it exactly but it's pretty clever, if highly expensive! Would have to cost at least $30-40000 to build something like this?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by mcmire ( 1152897 )
      Oh, so that's how much it costs...
  • It looks like they're doing what this guy did 6 months ago with a Wii
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw [youtube.com]

    His examples are more impressive than this - and he never called his stuff "holodeck v1.0"
    • His method also only works for one viewer. It is of course much more practical and useful until we have computers that can render complex scenes from all angles at once though. The display in TFA is much more like a real 'holodeck' because it works for multiple viewers, but in the meantime all we need to make better games/simulations is head tracking.
  • All the holodeck ever did was try to take over the Enterprise, kill everyone on board and, assuming Ensign Barclay must have at some point loaded an anime tentacle porn simulation, mate with the more nubile females in the crew.

    He who does not learn from the future is doomed to repeat it!
  • Looks 2D to me.

    • Looks 2D to me.
      That may be connected to the fact that you're (presumably) watching it on a 2D monitor.
  • This [epn-online.com] is a rather old article but it explains the technology behind this type of 3d display compared to others.
  • I think most people here don't see what's actually going on... This is a real 3d, like imax, but without the glasses and since you're all viewing it on a 2d screen, of course you can't see the 3d!!. They are using holograms to achieve real 3D. I know no one reads TFA but still, some of the comments today aren't of slashdot level.
    • According to the web site [holografika.com] this isn't honest-to-goodness holography, but works on similar principles.

      HoloVizio is not a purely holographic system that handles an enormous amount of redundant information. It is rather based on holographic geometrical principles with special focus on reconstructing the key elements of spatial vision. The pixels, or rather voxels of the holographic screen emit light beams of different intensity and colour to the various directions. A light-emitting surface composed of these v
  • I wasn't sure from TFA whether this was actual 3D W/ Parallax or just head tracking.

    If this can actually simulate parallax and depth with a decent refresh rate and color depth, it would be really cool. You could make fake windows that would actually look real, and about a hundred other aesthetic displays. I could make one in the shape of a portal displaying a fake room, and it would look real! so cool!

  • Forget article; check website for technical detail (Score:3, Informative)

    by Prune ( 557140 ) on Monday June 09, 2008 @06:41PM (#23717551)
    This doesn't work like the usual autostereoscopic 3D monitors. A few seconds in Google lead me to their site: http://holografika.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=29&Itemid=63 [holografika.com] Note the described operation, and also the interesting claim that "There's no contradiction between eye-convergence and focusing"--this is not the case with 3D shutterglasses or normal autostereoscopic monitors.
  • Judging by the new film Iron man this tech has been round for longer than we think. It is hard to imagine that because of the film this tech has been developed. I am not saying that in the incarnation in the film that that is the current marker or the technology but that is where it is going. I want my armour!!!!
  • I'm sorry, but it really bugs me when people refer to Star Trek TNG when refering to a Holodeck. But totally ignore the fact that Ray Bradbury's The Veldt described the very same thing decades earlier. Oh, and the guy that wanted Cindy Crawford⦠DON'T DATE HOLOGRAMS!
  • My first impression... another head tracker....

    My second impression... a really nifty way to actually get a screen to shine what you want in any direction.

    Each pixel acts as a projector! this file explains how!
    http://www.coherentproject.org/news_files/136_143.pdf [coherentproject.org]

    My guess is that they flash the lights behind the screen at a high frequency and use a high frequency liquid crystal to block all the rays they don't want...
    This display probably gets very hot, because much of the light would be blocked. BU
  • I feel sorry for the people of Amsterdam. At least half of them will be out of jobs.
  • ... had to be there.
  • More like holodeck 0.1 alpha, long way to go to become star trek's holodeck
  • you'd think they'd have decent demo videos. I mean for the love of the Holodeck, if you're trying to film something that looks 3D, and you want to convince us it looks 3D, maybe move the camera in a three-dimensional motion? Like walk around the TV or something? Sheesh.

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