I mean without any of these confounded glasses. Just a 3D picture on the screen.
Depends on what you mean.
If you’re talking about a TV that presents an image whose perspective changes depending on where you are looking at it from, we’re already there. It’s not practical or cheap, and a reliable system to film live-action in this manner is not even close to being developed, but the end-user technology exists.
If you’re talking about life-size 3D projection á la “Help me, Obi-Wan, you’re our only hope.” that also exists.
Neither of these are coming to a store near you anytime soon.
The problem with a true 3D screen is in the production. It can be done as an animation but to record a real scene it would require cameras to record all angles. It’s not possible. A movie like Avatar is just 2 cameras which produce an image with depth but only from the perspective of the camera. You can’t move around to gain a different perspective than the camera.
You forgot to mention the Philips 3D HDTV, which, while not commercially available yet, is coming out soon, if you’ve got the cash.
The big use right now is autostereoscapy, which uses the same technology found in those 3D holographic stickers. There are portable devices in Japan that already use the technology.
Is there a real demand? I can see it for computer games like 1st person shooters.
This is silly. You only need a few angles, which could then be used by a computer to extrapolate to a 3D image. To get 360[sup]o[/sup] in both planes, you could in theory use only 4 cameras to capture all the visual information necessary to make a completely 3D image. (You’d position them in a tetrahedral shape.)
No, it doesn’t. I’m not entirely sure what’s going on in that linked video, but it’s either a flat projection onto a screen, like we’ve been doing for ages, or it’s something added to the video feed (i.e., a special effect, as real as when Kirk beams down) that wouldn’t be visible to the live audience.
No, you can’t get all of the necessary information with only 4 cameras. As a counterexample, picture a rubber ball with a bunch of deep pits drilled in it, and with a colored dot at the bottom of each pit. To see the color of the dot at the bottom of a pit, you’d have to look almost straight down the pit, which means you’d need as many cameras as you have pits (which can be an arbitrarily large number).
Despite the title of that video, the display they’re talking about is neither “holographic”, nor “3-D”. It’s simply a normal HD video feed projected on a transparent Mylar screen.
Consumer-grade, goggle-less 3d technology could very well be on the way, too. Nintendo is releasing their new 3DS (the next iteration of the DS) soon. Though they’ve not yet revealed what technology is being used to make that possible, they are saying you won’t need stupid goggles
3D screens using a lenticular filter (i.e. the same idea as the 3D posters) have been around for a while. We had one for visualisation research 5+ years ago, and also had a laptop fitted with one. They work, but provide a very small viewing angle, and due to the filter there is an annoying specular reflection of ambient light. The restricted field of view makes them tireing to use. The laptop almost required a head brace to keep you in the sweet spot. At the time these were made my Sharp.
There is a system that uses a rotating screen. By using technique like the one in the linked video, but rotating it fast enough, and having a fast enough video projection technology you can get a “help me Obi-Wan” level of 3D. I.e. - really poor quality, and limited to a very small volume.
This has got me thinking, you couldn’t get a true walk-around 3 dimensional representation with standard cameras, but what if you were to represent the picture with CGI? Use a radar to map the shape of objects, cameras or some other device to record the colour or whatever other visual stuff that radar would fall short of, perhaps some standard cameras to record flat surfaces and background and finally a very powerful computer to put the whole lot together. Transmit.
Admittedly this must be well beyond current processing power - especially if you want the CGI to look as good as the movies are starting to achieve (frankly it’d have to be better still - I don’t think many people would fancy watching a big sporting event that looks like a computer game), but surely 3d of the future will be combination of lots of technologies.
Most likely the screen is some kind of micro-prism array that projects two images at slightly different angles. No glasses needed but you would only be able to view it from a specific point.
With fancier prism shapes, you could have images visible from more than two different angles, which would go some way towards fixing the “sweet spot” problem. I don’t know how well it’s possible to do that, but if anyone can lick it, it’s probably Nintendo.
Not to mention that even if it were possible with a small number of cameras, the rig would only work for one size of scene - try filming a mountain by placing cameras on each side of it, and it’s not the same proposition as filming a human.
It’s probably not that far off what we can do now - basically live motion capture/interpretation/rendering. It’s concievable.
However, I think the big obstacle to that happening would be the concept of filming a movie that way - if you’re looking from the wrong angle, you might miss some crucial point, or you might see something that was only meant to be revealed later, or you might just not see the scene the way the writer/producer/director intended you to.
A big part of movie making is the constraint and control of viewpoint and scene - to make you see the world (of the movie) in a very specific way. I guess true volumetric 3D would bring about its own new techniques and styles, but a lot of those that we currently use would simply not translate.
Wow now I really feel old.
There was a holographic video game made in the 90’s with a Dragon’s Lair playing style.
It wasn’t really 3D - action took place on a 2d plane that was made to appear as if floating in empty space by some sort of forced focus - you couldn’t look around any object on the screen, and there was no sterescopic depth or anything like that.
And it would be possible to make a very simple game that was truly holographic (think something like those old handheld LCD games which had five different fixed sprites for your character), but they wouldn’t be free-floating: You’d see the objects as though looking through a window. I imagine that the lack of such games is just because the Powers that Be decided there was no market for them.
I personally remember when RCA announced they had a 3D television set in development and a working model…back in 1966.
I even bought more stock in RCA thinking we were “close” to getting it in 1966.
RCA, at the time, was the world leader in television technology. Who else would have more credibility?
…still waiting and still ready to buy one.