Holographic video conferencing

[aswokei]

I had a great idea this morning while eating Cheerios. Holographic video conferencing. Think about it. We’ve had hologram technology for a long time now. Same is true for video conferencing. Why not combine the two? Think about how awesome it would be!

 

Here is how it would work. Both of the users would be sitting at different remote terminals designed to seat two people side by side. Each person would sit on the opposite side so that when the system is on and working and the system is taking holograms and relaying them to the complementing terminal 24 times every second, the missing person at each terminal person would appear to be occupying the empty seat at both terminals. And as a given, you’d also have audio so you could hear the person (Come to think of it, you could design it so the sounds are coming from that person’s holographic image). Shouldn’t be too hard to set up.

 

The system would actually be taking holograms at the rate of 24 times per second of the entire room (not just the person), but since the rest of the room is static, it just overlaps itself in the corresponding room. You don’t notice it. All you notice is a living, breathing human being with whistling nose hairs sitting right next to you.

 

Because there are no cameras to look at, you could give each other direct eye contact. As long as both of the terminals and immediate environments are the same, you could easily move around and spatially interact with one another as you would in real life (without the touching).

 

The weird thing I noticed is that despite how obvious of an invention it seems to be, I’ve never even seen it implemented in any sci-fi films. There are holograms in Star Wars, but they are pre-rendered. They’re holographic movies, unlike in my concept. Even in Star Trek, they only use regular video conferencing. The image of the Klingons are projected on a 2D surface. Bottom line: holographic video conferencing would be totally sweet.

 

Who's with me?

[Dapthar]

I had a great idea this morning while eating Cheerios. Holographic video conferencing. Think about it. We've had hologram technology for a long time now. Same is true for video conferencing. Why not combine the two? Think about how awesome it would be!

Yes, rudimentary holographic projectors have been around since the early 1990's, however, it takes a great deal of time to 'render' the hologram. Thus, unless better 'rendering' techniques are devised, real-time holographic video conferencing will not be feasible until computers become much faster.

 

(Source: http://xenia.media.mit.edu/~lucente/holo/holovideo.html)

[rajama]

aswokei

 

I read an article [New Scientist, Scientific American..?] about a system which was pretty much exactly as you've described, not full holographic, but some kind of stereo vision set-up, across a desk, etc... they used multiple cameras, needed some heavyweight servers and bandwidth to move content between two sites, but it worked.

 

Okay, so it probably only worked on Tuesdays, but it sounds like a workable product.

 

Dapthar

 

I didn't realise realtime holography was so far advanced - what happened after '95?

 

PS

 

Deep Space 9, aboard the Defiant, I remember someone chating to some admiral using a holo-link...

[Dapthar]

I didn't realise realtime holography was so far advanced - what happened after '95?

The majority of companies that I have investigated that are working on holographic technology are trying to make the holograms larger' date=' cheaper, faster.

 

Here's some more reference links on the subject, as well as some current products:

[list'][*]A research paper on the subject, with links to videos (The PDF at this link is approximately 812 kB. The videos linked in the article are about the same size.)

[*]A prototype product from Texas Instruments

[*]Recent developments in holographic technology

[rajama]

Many thanks...

 

Okay, so there's a fault at present with the research paper link and the last link describes a lensless 2D projector using a hologram to simulate the output of a whole optical system - which is cool - but the second example looks like it can provide VR for one eye..?

 

The real image application mentioned in the 2nd link raises the old issue of what to do with the light once it reaches the point it should 'be at' [a gel?] but it looks like it would project a hologram in the traditional SF sense.

 

Fun.

[Dapthar]

Many thanks...

No problem.

 

Okay' date=' so there's a fault at present with the research paper link ...

[/quote']Right click on the link, and click "Save Target As", or "Save Link As".

[juzcoim]

thats an interesting topic you have started... but i want to make a hologram of my own... can you people guide me to some documentation for that .. thnx.