| MadSci Network: Engineering |
Hi Joe!
That game was not holography, it was only hype. It used conventional optics to create a "real image"
of a flat CRT screen (using a large curved mirror.) Edmund Scientific sells a toy which does something similar:
it looks like a black flying saucer with a hole on top, and when a small object is dropped into the hole, the object
appears at the level of the hole, but if you try to touch it, nothing is there. People have been playing with this same illusion for 150 years.
Fully holographic television is being developed at the Media Lab at MIT. See Dr. Stephen Benton's website for more info.
A true hologram contains a huge amount of data, so the main challenge for researchers is how to transmit the information
across the limited bandwidth of current communication channels. I suspect that true holo-TV won't be
commercially available for many years.
One low-bandwidth option is stereo television using virtual reality goggles. If the "goggles" were the
size of contact lenses, then we'd be half way to Trek's "Holodeck" (walk around and look only, don't touch).
Three-D television is feasible today if we use non-holographic 3D display technology. There are
a number of different methods which use "stereo" 3D, meaning that they send a different image to each of your eyes. Some require
special polaroid glasses for viewing. Others are based optics which resembles slit-lens 3D postcards, and needs no glasses.
If I was forced to guess, I would say that the next big 3D craze will occur when virtual-reality goggles become more sophisticated and far less expensive. How would you like to play a modern high-resolution video game in a 3D "immersive" computer-generated environment with gigantic wrap-around display screens? All you need is some professional-quality VR goggles. The technology is not so far away, and the competition between various video game companies will be the driving force which makes it commonly available. Once it exists, it could easily be harnessed to produce couch-potato style 3D television.
Try the links in the MadSci Library for more information on Engineering.