3-D Holographic Displays from USC bring Star Wars Fantasies to Life

Companies have been attempting to bring viable 3-D technologies to life for a while now, but have had trouble due to high costs and the difficulty associated with producing crisp images. Scientists from the Graphics Lab at USC seem to have the answer. By using spinning mirrors, high definition projectors, and complex math algorithms they have been able to recreate a 3-dimensional TIE Fighter from Star Wars that appears to be floating in space.

The image is created by projecting nearly 3,000 images onto a spinning mirror every second. To achieve this, the team had to design a formula to trace the beams so that the projector can adjust to a viewer's position relative to the display and adjust to changes in height and distance in real time. For a more technical, jargon packed description, you can read the following abstract taken from their website:

"We describe a set of rendering techniques for an autostereoscopic light field display able to present interactive 3D graphics to multiple simultaneous viewers 360 degrees around the display. The display consists of a high-speed video projector, a spinning mirror covered by a holographic diffuser, and FPGA circuitry to decode specially rendered DVI video signals. The display uses a standard programmable graphics card to render over 5,000 images per second of interactive 3D graphics, projecting 360-degree views with 1.25 degree separation up to 20 updates per second. We describe the system's projection geometry and its calibration process, and we present a multiple-center-of-projection rendering technique for creating perspective-correct images from arbitrary viewpoints around the display. Our projection technique allows correct vertical perspective and parallax to be rendered for any height and distance when these parameters are known, and we demonstrate this effect with interactive raster graphics using a tracking system to measure the viewer's height and distance. We further apply our projection technique to the display of photographed light fields with accurate horizontal and vertical parallax. We conclude with a discussion of the display's visual accommodation performance and discuss techniques for displaying color imagery."

Besides being ridiculously cool, the emergence of new, revolutionary, and useful technologies from university labs its actually fairly critical. The continual development of new technologies is important because they help propel society forward. University labs play a large role in the development and research of new innovations for entrepreneurs to license, commercialize, and bring to the greater market as well. Licensing often becomes huge cash cows for these labs and is likewise important for them to continue bringing in research investments and grants. Just think of Google and their search technology that stemmed from Stanford University. You betcha Stanford has a piece of that pie.

We previously wrote about another 3-D technology that creates 3-D images from 2-D photographs.

Source: ICT Graphics Lab, WIRED gadget lab