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Tuesday, April 24, 2007 Practical Holographic VideoResearchers have designed a cheap and small holography system that will work with PCs and gaming consoles. By Kate Greene
The tyranny of two-dimensional computer and TV displays could soon be over. A team of MIT researchers has proposed a way to make a holographic video system that works with computer hardware for consumers, such as PCs with graphics cards and gaming consoles. The display, the researchers say, will be small enough to add to an entertainment center, provide resolution as good as a standard analog television, and cost only a couple hundred dollars. A holographic video display could provide another way to view medical images such as MRIs and CT scans, as well as sets of complex, multidimensional data and designs for furniture and cars, says V. Michael Bove Jr., director of the consumer electronics program, CELab, at MIT. And the system would be a natural fit for displaying video games and virtual worlds. Most games now have sophisticated three-dimensional models sitting deep within their software, "but you don't see them because [the images are] rendered as a two-dimensional picture," Bove says. The new system, called Mark III, is the third generation (following Mark I and Mark II) of MIT-designed holographic video displays that date back to the late 1980s. These earlier systems were "loud, finicky, required specialized computing hardware to generate a video signal, and were a general pain in the neck to work with," says Bove. A few years ago, he wondered if he could turn a laboratory-based holographic display system that cost tens of thousands of dollars into an affordable consumer product. Thus, Bove and his team have developed Mark III--expected to be completed within a couple of months--which is based on the earlier systems but has three major differences. First, explains Bove, the new system processes three-dimensional images on a standard graphics processor rather than on specialized hardware. It turns out, he says, that the graphics cards that are found in high-end PCs and gaming consoles are a good fit for the type of image processing required to create a hologram. Second, his team has redesigned a gadget called an acousto-optic modulator, commonly found in telecommunications systems, to direct light from lasers to form the hologram. The new modulator has a higher bandwidth, which makes for a high-resolution hologram, and is less expensive than the ones used in Mark II. Third, the researchers have eliminated some of the clunky optical components that made the Marks I and II as large as a dining-room table. To create a holographic video, Bove says, software produces a real-time, three-dimensional model of the objects within a scene. So, for an MRI of a beating heart, the software uses a collection of numbers that describe the position of all points on the surface of the heart, in all three dimensions. With such a model in place, software calculates how lasers need to project the light to create a hologram. In essence, the software creates a blueprint for the lasers to follow that consists of the basis of all holograms: a diffraction pattern, which occurs when light waves interfere with one another. |
Large-Scale Rewritable Holograms
02/08/2008



Comments
brunascle on 04/24/2007 at 3:36 PM
Web Developer
69
what's great it that it would probably already work with any software designed in DirectX/OpenGL, since the software is just sending the data about the 3d models to the hardware (via the drivers for the graphics library). as long as the hologram hardware implemented DirectX/OpenGL drivers, i imagine it would just be plug & play.
zippo on 04/24/2007 at 4:46 PM
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radmin on 04/25/2007 at 3:05 AM
1
Henryfarmer on 04/26/2007 at 9:06 AM
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Tremain2004 on 04/26/2007 at 1:16 PM
2
MIT EE.
grausc01 on 04/27/2007 at 9:16 AM
12
For future articles MIT Tech Review, please RESIST opening the story with saying a current technologies days are numbered. There are plenty of articles in your archives that open with this line and the products never turn over.
Yes, we will have holographic monitors some day, but not that soon.
SVE on 04/27/2007 at 7:55 PM
40
briang1621 on 04/30/2007 at 9:06 PM
31
Volumetric displays like that of Actuality-Systems have comparable viewing characteristic as holographic display but are larger than the one mentioned in this article, and in some cases lower resolution. 3D displays have advanced rapidly over the years, and are broken up into two categories, ones that require goggles or glasses and those that are goggle-less. The goggle-less displays like Sharp’s 3D monitor are on the market and coming down in price. Goggle 3D display are relatively common and are simple as a pair of goggles with a flickering LCD shutter which alternates in sync with a CRT or LCD screen to create a 3D illusionary effect.
Until now it seems that holographic display were far from being ready for market, but this breakthrough brings us with in a reasonable distance. I am interest to see which company buys this technology for their future displays, Sharp, Sony, or someone else?
Thank you
Brian Glassman
Pembroke Pines, Florida
www.techrd.com
GoodIdea on 02/22/2008 at 6:11 PM
1