An anonymous reader writes "Tech Review has a roundup of some cool, experimental new interfaces being shown at SIGGRAPH 2009, underway in New Orleans this week. They include an amazing 'touchable holograph' display, developed by a team in Japan, which uses an ultrasound device to simulate the sense of touch as the user grasps objects shown in 3D. The other ideas on display are Augmented Reality for Ordinary Toys, Hyper-Realistic Virtual Reality, 3D Teleconferencing and Scratchable Input Devices. If this is the future of computers, sign me up."
The conference has also seen the release of OpenGL 3.2 by the Khronos Group.
All the documentaries I've seen suggest it already happens and the problem is held at bay only by a small number of teenage ninjas and their fragile schoolgirl outfits.
With the discovery of the hard light drive, Rimmer was in pretty good shape. Still, not much could have been sweeter than the holoship.
When this goes commercial, my kids are getting bunk beds. Having a holodeck in my house completely outranks the importance of them having their own rooms.
Ever since I first heard of it I've thought augmented reality is going to be big some day. It's not much more than a toy right now (watching the video, it was clear that there's still a long way to go before it reaches it's full promise), but someday it'll be there. At my last job we used a lot of virtual reality modeling to do experimental training programs (learn to weld without real fire kind of stuff). Augmented reality will be so much better for this kind of thing. Think about it. A welder uses a real (modified) torch on a real piece of metal, but his goggles show the metal heating up and reforming. Or combine it with the tactile stuff from the other example and surgeon uses a "real" scalpel in a real operating room, but sees and feels a virtual patient. You could learn and practice very complicated procedures this way.
We're no where near being able to build holodecks, but between this tactile display tech and augmented reality we may not have to. Use the real world as your backdrop, put in real things where ever appropriate, and only simulate the stuff that you actually need to interact with.
While you provide some excellent examples of practical uses for augmented reality, you and I both know that it will mostly be used for entertainment (escaping zombies in your apartment block) or pr0n (that porn star now actually looks like she is in your bed).
The easiest and simplest use for augmented reality would be to label the real world...
Wear the special glasses (small and compact, not the prototype bulky ones) and everything you look at gets a label explaining what it is, stare at it and it gives you more detail, museums, art galleries and similar can finally remove labels from exhibits and people can get the more info than those audio commentaries while they look round at random and at their own speed....
Well in my welding example you're just using a normal (though modified) safety device for the job. With the surgeon... Well, maybe a modified face shield? I dunno... the idea is training for specific jobs anyway, it's not like you'd be walking around your day-to-day life wearing the things. You'd want to make it as natural as possible for the trainees, and where possible use eye gear normal to the job; but some people will probably just have to use goofy glasses.
I couldn't really tell from the video, and the article didn't specify. Are the touchable holograms 3D, or are they just 2D images floating in mid-air? I suspect the latter. Still impressive, though.
I couldn't really tell from the video, and the article didn't specify. Are the touchable holograms 3D, or are they just 2D images floating in mid-air? I suspect the latter. Still impressive, though.
It's a 3D rendered object, being projected onto a concave mirror. This gives the illusion of a 3D object floating in space because as you move your head, the perspective of the image changes as well.
They then use a couple WiiMotes to track your hand and use that data to interact with the image. So you can actually manipulate the image with your hand.
They also use some kind of ultrasound thing to give the impression of tactile feedback on your hand. So when you touch the image, you feel something on your
As we all should know from STNG, the 3d touchable hologram is probably the most dangerous entertainment system ever created.
The doors never let you out, the holographic characters become sentient, the safety protocals NEVER work and it opens a rift up to places where holographic characters evolved naturally, so they promptly invade.
STOP NOW BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!
I tap my desk all the time, just as a habit. Wouldn't want my cell phone to interpret that the wrong way -- or, if not my cell phone, perhaps somebody else's. And I wonder about somebody entering the room with a heavy step, or scuffing their feet... could be weird.
I remember ïseeing Apple's voice recognition demo'd years ago (on a Mac IIfx! yikes, that's old) and the presenter had to address the computer each time. "Computer, close the window. Computer, open Microsoft Word." Etc. Somebody in the audience asked him how that would work in a shared, open, noisy office environment, and he didn't know. He suspected that you couldn't use it on more than one computer, or you might end up directing somebody else's machine to do stuff. "Computer, shut down." Oops. Might the same be true of a scratch interface?
First, they'll set this up on PCs at home. Then it'll be laptops. Then, netbooks.
The next thing you know, you're gonna have to dodge a frigging mindfield of idiots walking around having orgasms (cmon, you KNOW this thing is gonna be used for porn) because wearable computers takes off.
'The next thing you know, you're gonna have to dodge a frigging mindfield of idiots walking around having orgasms (cmon, you KNOW this thing is gonna be used for porn) because wearable computers takes off.'
I made it SIGGRAPH last year, but not this year. Its GEEK heaven. SIGGRAPH makes me aware how inadequate current video technology is. Do not be deceived by current large screen HD TVs - technology can do so much better.
In a nutshell, perfect video technology would be "indistinguishable from looking outside of a window on a sunny day". Thats what human visual systems are designed for. I've seen some experimental systems at SIGGRAPH that start to approach this quality. I hope it doesnt take 40 years to commercialize this like HDTV. I would love to see a theater movie where it felt like I was looking through a window at another world.
Resolution is probably the best aspect of current video. Beyond about 2,000 scan lines and 4K horizontal pixels, you reallly cant see more, unless it is a very large screen.
Contrast is perhaps in worst shape. The most impressive videos are those that have contrast ranges over a million, preferably over a billion. Super dark shadows and bright light source appear real then. The best monitors at Best Buy have contrast ranges in hundred thousands, but many are under a thousand. Different contrasts are very noticeable viewing screens side-by side. Sony has an experimental Organic-LED screen with a million contrast that starts to look realistic.
Current video only fills about half of the human perceptual color space. I've seen six-primary-color systems at SIGGRAPH that approach 80%-90% of the color space. They are very impressive when looking at nature and artwork. Compare a work of art and its best conventional video display and the color inadequacies will be immediately apparent.
Least is important is 3D in my opinion. It does make things look more real when you look through a window.
A big issue with enhanced video is that its not just the display device, but the whole video system. You need a camera, a signal representation, coomunication bandwidth, and recording devices that support all the enhanced features. You really cant shoe-horn it in existing systems.
Contrast is perhaps in worst shape. The most impressive videos are those that have contrast ranges over a million, preferably over a billion. Super dark shadows and bright light source appear real then. The best monitors at Best Buy have contrast ranges in hundred thousands, but many are under a thousand. Different contrasts are very noticeable viewing screens side-by side. Sony has an experimental Organic-LED screen with a million contrast that starts to look realistic.
This LED-backlit LCD supposed has a five-million-to-one contrast ratio.
But then again, how many camera systems have 24-bit dynamic range and is this preserved in current digital compression techniques? Probably not. The whole system has to handle this.
Back in the 1990s when studios were switching over to digital editing, the advanced companies were a real stickler for 24-bit per color channel standard. The hardware graphics companies claimed this was overkill. It is not overkill where you have adquate monitors and cameras.
This LED-backlit LCD [amazon.com] supposed has a five-million-to-one contrast ratio.
Mod me (-1, Obvious), but marketing people and display scientists use different numerical systems. The latter use some carefully calibrated scales and test gear, the former uses blatant lies.
That Samsung may represent the best of LCD, but I'll bet $5 that it's not really 5x10^6 shades on the scale.
Also I have seen a smaller version of that Samsung LED set at a BestBuy and I was underwhelmed. I brought "A New Hope" on DVD (the bonus disc version that was largely unmodified) and I played it on a BR player connected to the set. The effect of the LEDs during the initial text scroll and star destroyer scene was unwatchable to me in the Magnolia room even though it was much brighter than my room at home. What happened is that rectangular regions would go black then gray once there were enough stars o
Yep, that's pretty much right - it's impossible to just stimulate each type of cone individually, no matter what wavelengths of light you use. (As the picture shows, the M and L receptors are particularly similar in terms of response curves.)
This also means that there are combinations of cone cell response that cannot be produced by any light source - so called imaginary colours [wikipedia.org]. (Yes, *any* light source - no matter what mixture of different wavelengths you use, you can't do it. The eye just doesn't respond that way. Certain optical illusions can produce imaginary colours, though.)
Not to knock the hologram, but that looked too limited to be very promising. The augmented reality has a lot more promise, considering its only been a few years since we got Haar Cascades for object recognition, and we've already got real-time facial recognition. Screw laser tag, I'm waiting to fight alien baddies.
Imagine real life way-points for GPS navigation, or mid-air big screen TVs, or general awesome HUD display. A single pair of badass augmented reality glasses could replace all of your monitors (TV, computer, etc) it could give perfect directions (follow the magic glowing green line) virtual computer terminals (say, via an Airport network computer) floating text bubbles for deaf people, insta binoculars, glorified porn, etc.
As awesome as these are, I can see where the bottleneck is: display technology.
These are all cool, but what we really need is the same thing we've needed for a while: a way to produce a good image and shovel that into our visual centers. That augmented reality game will only really be fun if we can wear a pair of lite glasses or point some device at our retina that will produce a display that will both exceed 640x480 and not fry our rods and cones.
The guy with the $5000+ HMD(likely with a lifespan measur
"PC" means personal computer yes, although in everyday usage it can also mean a Windows box. The latter meaning comes from the abbreviation of "IBM PC or 100% Compatible [wikipedia.org]." That label used to appear on software when computer architecture was not as uniform between competing manufacturers as it is now. The IBM PC [wikipedia.org] was a popular personal computer of the time, and thus many other companies cloned its architecture.
ultrasound... (Score:5, Funny)
So, you can actually feel something when you touch the hologram?
3-D PORN.
3-D STD . . . (Score:3, Funny)
So, you can actually feel something when you touch the hologram?
3-D PORN.
. . . just hope that you can't catch something when you touch . . .
Re:ultrasound... (Score:5, Funny)
So, you can actually feel something when you touch the hologram?
3-D PORN.
Ahem, they said mind blowing ...
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
that would be bad news for the oldest profession....
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
How long until there are giant 3-D tentacle monsters that rape Japanese teenagers?
Re:ultrasound... (Score:4, Funny)
As soon as I get my hands on an API.
Parent
Re:ultrasound... (Score:5, Funny)
As soon as I get my hands on an API.
And some Japanese teenage girls... ...You know what? Forget the API.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
All the documentaries I've seen suggest it already happens and the problem is held at bay only by a small number of teenage ninjas and their fragile schoolgirl outfits.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Please state the nature of the medical emergency.
Re: (Score:2)
Touchable Hologram? (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
With the discovery of the hard light drive, Rimmer was in pretty good shape. Still, not much could have been sweeter than the holoship.
When this goes commercial, my kids are getting bunk beds. Having a holodeck in my house completely outranks the importance of them having their own rooms.
Re:Touchable Hologram? (Score:5, Funny)
puncture repair kit on standby...
Parent
Augmented reality (Score:5, Interesting)
Ever since I first heard of it I've thought augmented reality is going to be big some day. It's not much more than a toy right now (watching the video, it was clear that there's still a long way to go before it reaches it's full promise), but someday it'll be there. At my last job we used a lot of virtual reality modeling to do experimental training programs (learn to weld without real fire kind of stuff). Augmented reality will be so much better for this kind of thing. Think about it. A welder uses a real (modified) torch on a real piece of metal, but his goggles show the metal heating up and reforming. Or combine it with the tactile stuff from the other example and surgeon uses a "real" scalpel in a real operating room, but sees and feels a virtual patient. You could learn and practice very complicated procedures this way.
We're no where near being able to build holodecks, but between this tactile display tech and augmented reality we may not have to. Use the real world as your backdrop, put in real things where ever appropriate, and only simulate the stuff that you actually need to interact with.
Re: (Score:2)
While you provide some excellent examples of practical uses for augmented reality, you and I both know that it will mostly be used for entertainment (escaping zombies in your apartment block) or pr0n (that porn star now actually looks like she is in your bed).
Re:Augmented reality (Score:4, Insightful)
The easiest and simplest use for augmented reality would be to label the real world ...
Wear the special glasses (small and compact, not the prototype bulky ones) and everything you look at gets a label explaining what it is, stare at it and it gives you more detail, museums, art galleries and similar can finally remove labels from exhibits and people can get the more info than those audio commentaries while they look round at random and at their own speed ....
Parent
Re:Augmented reality (Score:4, Funny)
Walking down the street -
"Single"
"Married"
"Single with Facebook Profile"
"Malda's GF - don't touch"
Parent
Re:Augmented reality (Score:5, Funny)
Walking down the street -
"Single"
"Married"
"Single with Facebook Profile"
"Malda's GF - don't touch"
And don't forget...
"Jailbait"
"Psycho"
"Trap"
Parent
Re:Augmented reality (Score:5, Insightful)
"Registered Sex Offender - Type 1"
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple made it popular to have white wires hanging out of your ears. It just takes marketing
Re: (Score:2)
Well in my welding example you're just using a normal (though modified) safety device for the job. With the surgeon... Well, maybe a modified face shield? I dunno... the idea is training for specific jobs anyway, it's not like you'd be walking around your day-to-day life wearing the things. You'd want to make it as natural as possible for the trainees, and where possible use eye gear normal to the job; but some people will probably just have to use goofy glasses.
mind-blowing (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
This being /. it's pretty likely he doesn't know. Unfortunately, it's entirely beyond my writing ability to describe getting blown.
Didn't you just describe it?
...being chastised for not having experienced something related to intercourse on /. is...well...interesting...
Re: (Score:2)
Holograms: 2D vs 3D (Score:2)
I couldn't really tell from the video, and the article didn't specify. Are the touchable holograms 3D, or are they just 2D images floating in mid-air? I suspect the latter. Still impressive, though.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I couldn't really tell from the video, and the article didn't specify. Are the touchable holograms 3D, or are they just 2D images floating in mid-air? I suspect the latter. Still impressive, though.
It's a 3D rendered object, being projected onto a concave mirror. This gives the illusion of a 3D object floating in space because as you move your head, the perspective of the image changes as well.
They then use a couple WiiMotes to track your hand and use that data to interact with the image. So you can actually manipulate the image with your hand.
They also use some kind of ultrasound thing to give the impression of tactile feedback on your hand. So when you touch the image, you feel something on your
Re: (Score:2)
Are there any open source projects doing something similar? Preferably with readily available/buildable hardware to keep the cost down?
Holodeck (Score:5, Funny)
The scratch interface could be a problem (Score:3, Insightful)
I tap my desk all the time, just as a habit. Wouldn't want my cell phone to interpret that the wrong way -- or, if not my cell phone, perhaps somebody else's. And I wonder about somebody entering the room with a heavy step, or scuffing their feet... could be weird.
I remember ïseeing Apple's voice recognition demo'd years ago (on a Mac IIfx! yikes, that's old) and the presenter had to address the computer each time. "Computer, close the window. Computer, open Microsoft Word." Etc. Somebody in the audience asked him how that would work in a shared, open, noisy office environment, and he didn't know. He suspected that you couldn't use it on more than one computer, or you might end up directing somebody else's machine to do stuff. "Computer, shut down." Oops. Might the same be true of a scratch interface?
Re: (Score:2)
Come in to work Friday morning and yell, "Computer. Format C drive."
Whoohoo!! Three day weekend while IT reinstalls five dozen desktop systems.
Re: (Score:2)
I see where this is going (Score:3, Funny)
First, they'll set this up on PCs at home. Then it'll be laptops. Then, netbooks.
The next thing you know, you're gonna have to dodge a frigging mindfield of idiots walking around having orgasms (cmon, you KNOW this thing is gonna be used for porn) because wearable computers takes off.
Re:I see where this is going (Score:4, Funny)
'The next thing you know, you're gonna have to dodge a frigging mindfield of idiots walking around having orgasms (cmon, you KNOW this thing is gonna be used for porn) because wearable computers takes off.'
You say that like it's a bad thing!
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
TV screens still have a long way to go (Score:5, Informative)
In a nutshell, perfect video technology would be "indistinguishable from looking outside of a window on a sunny day". Thats what human visual systems are designed for. I've seen some experimental systems at SIGGRAPH that start to approach this quality. I hope it doesnt take 40 years to commercialize this like HDTV. I would love to see a theater movie where it felt like I was looking through a window at another world.
Resolution is probably the best aspect of current video. Beyond about 2,000 scan lines and 4K horizontal pixels, you reallly cant see more, unless it is a very large screen.
Contrast is perhaps in worst shape. The most impressive videos are those that have contrast ranges over a million, preferably over a billion. Super dark shadows and bright light source appear real then. The best monitors at Best Buy have contrast ranges in hundred thousands, but many are under a thousand. Different contrasts are very noticeable viewing screens side-by side. Sony has an experimental Organic-LED screen with a million contrast that starts to look realistic.
Current video only fills about half of the human perceptual color space. I've seen six-primary-color systems at SIGGRAPH that approach 80%-90% of the color space. They are very impressive when looking at nature and artwork. Compare a work of art and its best conventional video display and the color inadequacies will be immediately apparent.
Least is important is 3D in my opinion. It does make things look more real when you look through a window.
A big issue with enhanced video is that its not just the display device, but the whole video system. You need a camera, a signal representation, coomunication bandwidth, and recording devices that support all the enhanced features. You really cant shoe-horn it in existing systems.
Re: (Score:2)
Contrast is perhaps in worst shape. The most impressive videos are those that have contrast ranges over a million, preferably over a billion. Super dark shadows and bright light source appear real then. The best monitors at Best Buy have contrast ranges in hundred thousands, but many are under a thousand. Different contrasts are very noticeable viewing screens side-by side. Sony has an experimental Organic-LED screen with a million contrast that starts to look realistic.
This LED-backlit LCD [amazon.com] supposed has a f
Re: (Score:2)
This LED-backlit LCD supposed has a five-million-to-one contrast ratio.
But then again, how many camera systems have 24-bit dynamic range and is this preserved in current digital compression techniques? Probably not. The whole system has to handle this.
Back in the 1990s when studios were switching over to digital editing, the advanced companies were a real stickler for 24-bit per color channel standard. The hardware graphics companies claimed this was overkill. It is not overkill where you have adquate monitors and cameras.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
This LED-backlit LCD [amazon.com] supposed has a five-million-to-one contrast ratio.
Mod me (-1, Obvious), but marketing people and display scientists use different numerical systems. The latter use some carefully calibrated scales and test gear, the former uses blatant lies.
That Samsung may represent the best of LCD, but I'll bet $5 that it's not really 5x10^6 shades on the scale.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Bingo
Also I have seen a smaller version of that Samsung LED set at a BestBuy and I was underwhelmed. I brought "A New Hope" on DVD (the bonus disc version that was largely unmodified) and I played it on a BR player connected to the set. The effect of the LEDs during the initial text scroll and star destroyer scene was unwatchable to me in the Magnolia room even though it was much brighter than my room at home. What happened is that rectangular regions would go black then gray once there were enough stars o
Re:TV screens still have a long way to go (Score:4, Interesting)
Yep, that's pretty much right - it's impossible to just stimulate each type of cone individually, no matter what wavelengths of light you use. (As the picture shows, the M and L receptors are particularly similar in terms of response curves.)
This also means that there are combinations of cone cell response that cannot be produced by any light source - so called imaginary colours [wikipedia.org]. (Yes, *any* light source - no matter what mixture of different wavelengths you use, you can't do it. The eye just doesn't respond that way. Certain optical illusions can produce imaginary colours, though.)
Parent
Augmented reality was the only decent dispaly. (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine real life way-points for GPS navigation, or mid-air big screen TVs, or general awesome HUD display. A single pair of badass augmented reality glasses could replace all of your monitors (TV, computer, etc) it could give perfect directions (follow the magic glowing green line) virtual computer terminals (say, via an Airport network computer) floating text bubbles for deaf people, insta binoculars, glorified porn, etc.
Displays (Score:2)
As awesome as these are, I can see where the bottleneck is: display technology.
These are all cool, but what we really need is the same thing we've needed for a while: a way to produce a good image and shovel that into our visual centers. That augmented reality game will only really be fun if we can wear a pair of lite glasses or point some device at our retina that will produce a display that will both exceed 640x480 and not fry our rods and cones.
The guy with the $5000+ HMD(likely with a lifespan measur
Finally a Man's interface (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I'm a PC.... (Score:4, Funny)
Who cares?
By the way, Macs are Personal Computers too.
Parent
Re:I'm a PC.... (Score:5, Funny)
You take that back!
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Precisely.
I don't understand this 'PC vs Mac' bullshit. It's all the same hardware (now, anyway).
What about those of us who use Linux/FreeBSD/OpenBSD/Plan9 as our day-to-day OS. Are they not running on "PC's"?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Now get off my lawn!