3D TV idea

[padren]

Pure speculation as I walked home with my coffee, so don't think too much of it:

 

Concept Device:

 

A glass contianer is filled with a low density of a clear gas, two laser beams swivel on 2 axis much like the reader of a CD ROM.

 

Laser one, is a simple coler/brightness beam.

 

Laser two, is a higher powered ultraviolet beam (or infrared if you can get it to high enough energy, which may be a contraction with infrared by nature..I am not sure)

 

Laser three, is another higher powered ultraviolet beam identical to laser two.

 

Process:

 

A 3D graphics system sends data for the 3D model to the base controller for the three lasers, which then target the points in x,y,z to be rendered with the appropriate brightness and color.

 

Laser one sends the beam of the right color and brightness.

 

Lasers two and three also converge on that point, exciting the gas enough to reflect the light of laser one.

 

The energy from just laser two or three is not enough to excite the gas, so only the pin point location of the convergence can be luminated by the laser one.

 

The gas is only excited long enough to maintain the brightness for a fraction of a second, (1/20th or 1/60th would result in those frame rates, etc), by which time the lasers would have finished their sweep and started back at point one.

 

Additional trios of lasers could be added to speed up the system with parallel rendering.

 

 

Failings:

 

There would be no way to project black, nor any way to ensure if you look at the screen from the front where a dimmer patch of texture resides, that bright textures on the opposing side won't make them hard to view, so it would only really work if it only rendered the faces facing forward, preventing you from walking around the display, etc.

 

The heat differences could cause the gas to circulate, though the framerate would likely be too fast to notice this.

 

Unlike systems that trick the left and right eye into seeing fake depth, this system is limited to 3D renderings within the space of the glass container.

 

Edit: And one other failing: the radiant light reflecting off the gas could interfere with other luminated areas of the same scene, and it would be impossible to prevent colors from bleeding this way. I suppose the system could be pretty but even if it could be engineered I guess it would be mostly useless.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

http://www.aist.go.jp/aist_e/latest_research/2006/20060210/20060210.html