Perspecta Walk Around 3D Display

Spinneyhead writes "New Scientist reports on the Perspecta display, a goldfish bowl like device that displays moving images in such a way that they seem to "float" within the display. "To display the image, software inside the Perspecta chops a 3D model generated by the computer into 198 separate pieces, like slices of cake, which are then projected onto the screen in quick succession by a graphics accelerator that feeds image slices to an optical system mounted below the screen. The result looks to the viewer like a 3D image composed of 100 million "volume pixels" or "voxels".""

hmm.

[toQDuj]

for the same price as one 25 cm 3d display, you can have 4 powermac g5's with dual 30" displays. that's 8 massive displays for the price of one 25 cm goldfish bowl..

In order to make it appealing they'd have to produce it for about 400 $ methinks. and connect it to a telephone :)
B.

Arrgh, Refresh rate!!

[corsec67]

From the article:

turns at 15 revolutions per second, sweeping out a solid white sphere.

I definitly don't want it until they get up 85 revolutions per second, and probably more. And I thought that 60 was horrible, imagine what 15 Hz would look like.

Movie

[panxerox]

I dont know why it sounds like a jet taking off but heres a

movie [yahoo.com]

Old idea, technology not there yet

[oren]

I recall reading about such a system in the late 80s or early 90s. It was made by TI and was much more ambitious - think a 2m x 2m x 1m tank used for air traffic control.

This ones looks more practical, even if much less useful. At 15Hz and a mere 200x768x768 pixels, it is requires a mere 1/3GB but a whopping bandwidth of 5GB/s, and the quality is like that of a Dr. Who prop. Scale it up to 512x1048x1048 at 60Hz and you'll need an acceptable 1.5GB of memory but unrealistic 90GB/s memory bandwidth to drive the thing.

While this might be possible to resolve using massively parallel interfaces or something, I bet we'd still need Moore's law to hold for another decade or two before the quality of this type of display can rival that of current 2D ones.

In the meanwhile, this will remain a gimmick or be limited for very special applications where the low quality is acceptable (hint: this probably rules out medical applications :-)

Re:hmm.

[VoidEngineer]

yes, but your 8 massive displays still don't display true 3D. cost of two airplanes colliding > $40,000 cost of overradiating someone during cancer treatment > $40,000 cost of misdrilling an industrial 1,000ft oil well > $40,000 some applications just need 3D visualization, and all the processing power and 3D graphic cards and 2D monitors in the world simply won't allow you to effectively participate or utilize those industry applications if you don't have a real 3D visualization system. and stereogoggle systems won't let you walk around the object, unless you're working in a true CAVE environment; and if you're working in a CAVE, well, let's just say that the pricetag is well into the six-figure range by then, what with the need for at least 4 stereo-enabled video projectors, the control application, the tracking hardware, and the stereogoggles. your $400 pricetag shows that you're stuck in the consumer-market mentality. working at a hospital, i can vouch that we regularly buy equipment ranging from $20,000 to well over $1,000,000, (which is the price tag for a CT or MRI scanner). you can buy a used ultrasound scanner for about $40,000. and if we could, we would totally buy one of these things and put it into our reading room and have it be part of our post-processing, pre-surgical workflow procedure. $40,000 for a 3D visualization station to get a quick preview of your surgical target before operating? hells yeah, we would buy it for $40,000. the problem with the Perspecta is that it's not FDA approved yet, so meat-and-potato hospitals aren't allowed to buy it yet.

Volumetric display without rotation

[geordieboy]

Here's an idea. Instead of providing a surface to scatter off by rotating a surface in space, fill a vessel full of some gas and focus two lasers at the point you want to scatter the light. Arrange for the freqencies of the two beams to add up to the frequency of a transition from the ground state of the atoms in the gas to an excited state. Photons should be produced where the beams intersect. Then you could make an image by just scanning through the volume intersecting the beams in a grid. Conceivably color could be provided with a mixture of gases and various lasers.

Plane safety & PS3

[Dog135]

If you want practical 3D displays for something like an airport, you CAN use stereo goggles along with a trackball to rotate around the y axis. A setup like that would work well sitting at a desk, rather then this setup which would require everone standing around the center of the room, getting in each other's way. (Or each person with their own table to walk around)

Stereo goggles only require 2 3D graphics cards, which can easily be run by a single computer, and they end up giving you more freedom, since you can rotate an object quicker with a knob (or trackball) then you could walking around the display.

So why haven't they done this yet? Price sure isn't an issue. Though the price of reprogramming their systems might.

It may be because they want them to be able to see other stats other then just the view of the planes. But if they give multiple views on a single "screen", then use a device like the Nostromo SpeedPad [thinkgeek.com] to switch between them, then they'd have just as much control as they have now. Left hand on the screen controls, right hand on the rotation knob.

3D technology has been around for a long time. The problem isn't with the hardware, it's with the software. Hopefully, that's why the PS3 has two screen outputs: for 3D graphics in games. (If the PS3 has built in 3D goggle support, I'm getting a 3rd mortgage)