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Movies Forum Index » Movie Technology Forum » Article on 3D television "a reality within five years"
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| Darren |
 Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2008 3:59 am |
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I found this article about how they are going to have 3-D with no glasses.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/02/06/sci3dtv106.xml
More on 3-D http://www.3dtv-research.org/
Darren
********
3D television 'a reality within five years'
By Roger Highfield, Science Editor
Last Updated: 6:02am GMT 06/02/2008
A true three dimensional TV that does not depend on wearing strange glasses
could be demonstrated within five years. Scientists have at last started to
catch up with the 3D holographic displays that have become commonplace in
science fiction films.
The Princess Leia figure projected by R2-D2 in Star Wars is one example of
moving holograms that have been shown in a wide range of films over the
decades since the invention of holography in the 1960s.
But the reality has lagged far behind and for decades relied on using
glasses to feed a slightly different image to the right and left eyes, using
different coloured lenses or polaroid, for instance in the first film of the
"golden era" of 3D movies, Bwana Devils.
The glasses remain in use today, for instance to view an Imax version of
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.
Now a new material that will allows an updateable palm sized 3D holographic
display is described in Nature by Dr Savas Tay, Prof Nasser Peyghambarian
and colleagues at the University of Arizona, Tucson, in work that raises
hopes for applications in the home, defence, medicine and industry.
Red ghostly displays produced by the team, which includes members of the
Nitto Denko Technical Corporation, Oceanside, California, show a car, brain
molecule and skull in three dimensions. Dr Tay says that if all goes well, a
prototype holographic TV system could be available in five years.
Holograms are interference patterns of light generated by the interaction of
a uniform reference laser beam with a second beam that has been reflected
from an object of interest. If a beam similar to the original reference beam
is the shone through a hologram, the result is a three-dimensional image of
the object scanned.
Just as a moving picture is actually a series of stills shown in quick
succession, so a moving hologram would be a series of still holograms to
fool the brain.
The problem is that individual still holograms contain so much information
that they require a special medium to record them and vast computing power.
Computer power is becoming cheaper all the time and there is now a way to
record them digitally, using a sheet of laser light crafted by computer.
The key to today's advance is a new medium to record the holograms which is
based on specially designed "photo refractive" polymers that respond to
light and can be overwritten with a device called a "spatial light
modulator", unlike the media traditionally used for holography which worked
like an old fashioned photographic film.
"Our process is reversible. You can store them and erase them any time you
want," says Dr Tay.
Using this material the team has produced the largest display of its kind,
measuring four inches square, that can be erased and updated as required.
A foot sized screen is under development, and two colour versions already
exist.
Although the current display is not yet quick enough in terms of being
updated to show a movie, it already has practical uses, for instance in
planning brain surgery based on medical scans, says Dr Tay. "Using 3D is a
huge benefit," he says.
Prof Joseph Perry of Georgia Tech, Atlanta, comments: "Moviegoers who crave
that feeling of being 'inside' the action will welcome the news.
"The technology still has some way to go to maturity, but ultimately it's
not just the cinéastes who could benefit: displays that can provide
realistic three-dimensional images with a wide angular viewing range might
also be used in military or medical contexts, such as the simulation of
field situations or the guidance of keyhole surgery."
As for when he expects the first 3D TVs based on this technology to appear,
he says "within two to three years."
Prof Levent Onural of Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey, coordinator of a
large scale EC funded project on 3DTV ( www.3dtv-research.org): adds
"Interest in 3D video is on the rise both among the scientists and the
public. At present, there is no display which can provide true 3D video.
"I predict another eight-10 years to achieve a satisfactory true 3D display
prototype," he says.
"There are many scientists who are less optimistic: they say 15-25 years are
needed. However, one thing is certain: we know it will be there, since we
are well aware of the underlying theories."
Leading manufacturers such as Philips, Mitsubishi and Samsung are beginning
to launch three-dimensional TVs in which objects appear to leap out at the
viewer, without the need for the special glasses used in cinemas, and that
can add depth to two-dimensional television.
However, this illusion is typically created by a "ribbed" lens on the screen
that sends different images to each eye, giving the impression of depth,
analogous to the postcards with images that change when you tilt them.
How it works
A hologram is recorded in a high tech polymer with a sheet of laser light,
controlled by computer with a device called a spatial light modulator to
craft the right image as if it came from a 3D object.
A weak laser is then focussed on a TV screen made of the polymer. Waves of
light reflected by the screen produce patches of light and dark, building up
the image.
This creates a 3D hologram projected forward from the screen, similar to
that of Princess Leia in Star Wars.
The computer quickly updates the polymer hologram with the spatial light
modulator. As a result, a viewer sees a moving 3D image without the need for
specially adapted glasses. |
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| Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2008 2:57 pm |
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I snipped the fluff - comments below
On Mon, 11 Feb 2008 02:59:32 -0500, "Darren" <dnemeth01@charter.net>
wrote:
Quote: I found this article about how they are going to have 3-D with no glasses.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/02/06/sci3dtv106.xml
A true three dimensional TV that does not depend on wearing strange glasses
could be demonstrated within five years. Scientists have at last started to
catch up with the 3D holographic displays that have become commonplace in
science fiction films.
The Princess Leia figure projected by R2-D2 in Star Wars is one example of
moving holograms that have been shown in a wide range of films over the
decades since the invention of holography in the 1960s.
Red ghostly displays produced by the team, which includes members of the
Nitto Denko Technical Corporation, Oceanside, California, show a car, brain
molecule and skull in three dimensions. Dr Tay says that if all goes well, a
prototype holographic TV system could be available in five years.
Holograms are interference patterns of light generated by the interaction of
a uniform reference laser beam with a second beam that has been reflected
from an object of interest. If a beam similar to the original reference beam
is the shone through a hologram, the result is a three-dimensional image of
the object scanned.
The key to today's advance is a new medium to record the holograms which is
based on specially designed "photo refractive" polymers that respond to
light and can be overwritten with a device called a "spatial light
modulator", unlike the media traditionally used for holography which worked
like an old fashioned photographic film.
"Our process is reversible. You can store them and erase them any time you
want," says Dr Tay.
As for when he expects the first 3D TVs based on this technology to appear,
he says "within two to three years."
"There are many scientists who are less optimistic: they say 15-25 years are
needed. However, one thing is certain: we know it will be there, since we
are well aware of the underlying theories."
The other major issue with holograms has always been the requirements
to take them. You need super-stable platforms, laser light that could
be damaging to actors' eyes, and a recording media as large as the
display media. Even if you discount these limitations, the timelines
given in the article are ridiculous.
Further, the Princess Leia effect is not attainable with any current
or foreseeable technology, nor is it particularly useful for
moviemaking or television. The projection of a hologram into open
space with no effect on surrounding objects, and no visible screen to
hold the image, would have to rely on manipulating particles of dust
or smoke so that a beam could strike only the desired particle in a
cloud and illuminate it, and then the other particles could not
reflect any of that light impinging on them. There have been attempts
to use an evacuated chamber and a rapidly rotating spiral "screen,"
and some crude attempts at using rotating LED wands, but the
resolution is poor, and the level of development is similar to that of
the early rotating disk televisions. It doesn't make a whole lot of
difference anyway, since a movie with one or two actors in an open
space with no scenery or background is more suited to theatre of the
absurd than common cinematic styles.
What appears to be a much more practical display is one based on the
current work being done on photo-interpretation, merged with some
techniques used for CGI graphics rendering. There are already
programs that can produce walk-through or fly-through displays of some
photos. Cues such as the angles of solid planes, color variation,
haze and blue shift are used by the programs to estimate depth and
then plot it.
Additionally, it has been possible for years to take a standard
stereoview, scan it into a computer, then use the displacement of the
views to measure approximate distances. The practical number of depth
planes discernable with a home scanner and computer is limited to
about twenty by the resolution, but this is also a practical amount of
planes for a computer to work with when creating a simple depth map.
For a single viewer sitting in front of a display screen that has head
tracking capabilities, an accomodation of a change of view of a few
inches left or right may already be within the capability of a pretty
simple and straightforward program.
Instead of dealing with the huge image density of holographic
information, a display based on this technology would have an image
data density of _at most_ twenty times existing technology. With
compression algorythms and blanking of areas with unused data such as
the space within an object or the air around it, an effective
moderately turnable 3D image might require only about three times
current image data density, and I estimate that a fully rotatable
image, derived from images from four surrounding cameras and possibly
an overhead camera, should only be about six to eight times denser in
image data than a flat image of the same scene. |
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