OT - In the future, televisions will be in 3-D. Cable has a bright future, indeed:
3dmedia.com
Click on the 2nd and 3rd mpeg links on the home page for a demo.
Here is a story about the technology and it's possibilities:
zdnet.com
Enter the Third Dimension
A new 3-D display technology isn't simulated--it's real.
By Carol Levin — December 9, 1999
Tucked inside a nondescript building in Manhattan's Silicon Alley, a group of engineers is thinking outside the box. Literally. Dimensional Media Associates is working on a 3-D display. No big deal, except that viewers don't have to wear geeky glasses or goggles.
The technology may enable employees to teleconference in 3-D, consumers to "touch" goods for sale on the Web, and medical researchers to visualize protein-folding models. A visit to the company's research lab isn't for the faint of heart. Walk inside and you hear an amplified heartbeat. The heart--actually a high-resolution 3-D image of it--is suspended a few inches in front of one of the prototype display stations. A set of surgeon's calipers attached to a force-feedback contraption is nearby. A tug on one of the vessels pulls it slightly, and you feel the twitch of the muscle in response. (A "stiffness" parameter is built into the software.) Enough cardiac surgery for today.
Floating Images
Alan Sullivan, chief science officer at Dimensional Media Associates (DMA), is overflowing with enthusiasm about the potential of the Multiplanar Volumetric Display that his team is developing. The initial applications are for medical imaging, automobile manufacturing, and other high-end applications, but Sullivan says that prototypes of 3-D displays will be on desktops in six months.
Among more mainstream applications, a 3-D display could assist financial analysts in visualizing trends based on enormous amounts of data, and computer games could take on a whole new dimension. But once 3-D hits the Internet, the fun really begins. Web retailers could let you outfit a model with clothing you're interested in buying and you'd get the full effect, not a flat simulation on your monitor's screen.
Graphics cards today have 3-D features, but the 3-D data is trapped inside the card. Once the data travels to the monitor, the third dimension is squeezed onto a two-dimensional surface. The effect is merely simulated 3-D. DMA has figured out how to liberate the 3-D data so images don't just seem to float in space, but actually float in space.
DMA has kept a low profile so far and isn't divulging details about its technology, since patents are pending. According to Sullivan, the Multiplanar Volumetric Display uses not one plane of image data--as conventional displays do--but 12 planes, each depicting a different depth. The end result is essentially a stack of images floating either a few inches in front of the display or inside the display, as if you're watching fish inside an aquarium. The display uses an array of optical components, such as parabolic mirrors and beam splitters to collect, focus, and project light in space to form volumetric images. Since the images have volume, they're measured in voxels--volume picture elements--rather than pixels.
DMA began as an R&D lab producing advanced visualization systems for the government and for the medical field. Now, it's striking out into commercial territory. The company has installations of what it calls an "animatronic" 3-D display that projects a 3-D image of a product--a Kirin beer bottle, an Adidas sneaker, a diamond watch--into thin air.
DMA is currently working with Silicon Graphics to develop a desktop display. The cost, says Sullivan, would be a few thousand dollars. While the display industry is moving to flat panels, DMA is moving in the opposite direction. A 3-D desktop display would take up about the same amount of space as a monitor does today. The technology doesn't work with flat panels. Future prototypes may have more planes, offer 24-bit color, and have five times as many voxels. The most far-reaching goal is the complete reinvention of the user interface. Instead of moving files with a mouse, you would actually pick them up to move them. |
