Looking Glass – A new type of holographic interface • Hacker News Board

Re: Looking Glass – A new type of holographic interface

#71

Post by nchan01 » Wed, Jul 25, 2018, 10:54 AM UTC

mrhappyunhappy wrote: post #49

janoc wrote: post #19

These lenticular autostereoscopic displays have been around for a long time and never quite took off. There have been even 3D TVs (Philips) using this idea. I am not quite sure what is "new" apart of yet again abusing the "holographic" term (hint, it has zero to do with holograms or holography). The major issues with these are the limited viewing angles and the enormous bandwidth needed to both render the individual…

I just want to point out what a shitty website they have. Expected to see display in action on home page instead got a wall of text followed by press releases. Click on monitors and more, whatever more means, and get a how to install wall of text and 3D renders. Where the fuck can you find the actual models for sale?! Christ.

I feel like you might have landed on http://blog.lookingglassfactory.com. Their main website is http://lookingglassfactory.com

Re: Looking Glass – A new type of holographic interface

#72

Post by jedimastert » Wed, Jul 25, 2018, 11:41 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #61

It's not a hologram, of course. It's a stack of flat displays. That's been tried before, in many ways. The first try was a vibrating mirror.[1] There's a flat rotating mirror system from FakeSpace.[2] It's not bad; you can walk around it. Move vertically, though, and the illusion breaks down. There's a scheme with gas ionized by intersecting laser beams. That's very low-rez, but truly volumetric. Eventually, someone…

Did you forget the first link?

Re: Looking Glass – A new type of holographic interface

#73

Post by tobbebex » Wed, Jul 25, 2018, 11:42 AM UTC

A couple of years ago I worked with the 3d engine for an autostereoscopic display at Setred (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zkwq_cQNLU8&feature=youtu.be).

For us the DVI bandwidth was the limiting factor to deliver 40-50 views at reasonable framerates (besides raw GPU computing power), so our display actually had 8(!) DVI inputs. That also gave us a natural interface to add distributed rendering, supporting up to 8 GPUs for rendering. In most cases though, one monster PC with 3 GPUs and 5 DVIs was enough to produce interactive framerates.

Re: Looking Glass – A new type of holographic interface

#74

Post by modzu » Wed, Jul 25, 2018, 12:46 PM UTC

maxton wrote: post #21

janoc wrote: post #19

These lenticular autostereoscopic displays have been around for a long time and never quite took off. There have been even 3D TVs (Philips) using this idea. I am not quite sure what is "new" apart of yet again abusing the "holographic" term (hint, it has zero to do with holograms or holography). The major issues with these are the limited viewing angles and the enormous bandwidth needed to both render the individual…

This isn't quite the same as what you're talking about. The lenticular displays only vary in the x-dimension, but this display seems to work in both dimensions, which would probably create a noticeably better 3D effect.

looking glass is also x-dimension only: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lookingglass/the-lookin...

Re: Looking Glass – A new type of holographic interface

#75

Post by lawlessone » Wed, Jul 25, 2018, 1:19 PM UTC

This would be great for voxatron.

Re: Looking Glass – A new type of holographic interface

#76

Post by aeorgnoieang » Wed, Jul 25, 2018, 1:53 PM UTC

mosselman wrote: post #62

"I think most people don’t want this 1984 vision of the future, where everyone is geared up 16 hours a day." I assume the author means the book '1984' by George Orwell and I come to the conclusion that the author has never read the book and does not know what it is about. Not every dystopian story is 1984. A far more logical reference would have been to 'Ready Player One' by Ernest Cline which is in fact about a dyst…

"1984" also just means 'dystopian'. It's not always a literal reference to that specific work.

Re: Looking Glass – A new type of holographic interface

#77

Post by dosy » Wed, Jul 25, 2018, 2:36 PM UTC

_ph_ wrote: post #68

dosy wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Truly holographic displays will emerge once we can control ligth interference in the display. Could you explain this a bit more please to give an idea of the path to get there?

Not the poster above, but I will try a short explanation. You see an object, because light goes from its surface (either emitted or reflected ambient light) to your eyes. You see it in 3 dimensions, because the light differs by the viewing angle. Holography is a technology of recording the light "emitted" by the object. The light has to be recorded in direction and intensity. This is done via interference between the…

That's a great explanation, thanks.

For the way you described it, to me, it doesn't sound that hard.

- Create interference pattern

- Record interference pattern

- Shine ref light onto pattern to recover emitted light

If done perfectly would this yield a convincing hologram (what I might try to describe as "visual sense impression of real 3D object being present" ) ?

What are the major limitations in the current technology? You said it might be possible for high end screen, does that mean there is hologram tech out there? I have never seen any demonstrated.

Is there some sort of information processing problem that software could solve on the interference pattern? Or is this more a physics problem -- maybe we do not have the materials that can do the steps required?

Re: Looking Glass – A new type of holographic interface

#78

Post by hateful » Wed, Jul 25, 2018, 2:42 PM UTC

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #22

hateful wrote: post #6

"The Looking Glass generates 45 distinct views of a three-dimensional scene" Now that GPUs can reliably generate 60 FPS, this is the next step to push that technology. Because you'll need 45x60FPS for the same quality. And then you'll push the 45 number higher. (yes, I know the 60 isn't visible and has to do with control input).

If this becomes popular, GPU manufacturers will come up with an equivalent (or just extension) of Single Pass Stereo rendering. https://developer.nvidia.com/vrworks/graphics/singlepassster...

The only issue is that the display doesn't require glasses, so it doesn't have any idea where you're eyes are. Or if there are multiple viewers.

Re: Looking Glass – A new type of holographic interface

#79

Post by _ph_ » Wed, Jul 25, 2018, 2:44 PM UTC

dosy wrote: post #77

_ph_ wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the poster above, but I will try a short explanation. You see an object, because light goes from its surface (either emitted or reflected ambient light) to your eyes. You see it in 3 dimensions, because the light differs by the viewing angle. Holography is a technology of recording the light "emitted" by the object. The light has to be recorded in direction and intensity. This is done via interference between the…

That's a great explanation, thanks. For the way you described it, to me, it doesn't sound that hard. - Create interference pattern - Record interference pattern - Shine ref light onto pattern to recover emitted light If done perfectly would this yield a convincing hologram (what I might try to describe as "visual sense impression of real 3D object being present" ) ? What are the major limitations in the current techn…

The catch is, that the patterns have the resolution of the wavelength of light. You cannot take plain black and white film for this, you would need extremely high resolution film material. Agfa actually produced special film for holograms for a while, high contrast and very high resolution, but with a sensitivity like ISO 10. The resolution is far higher than normal LCD screens offer and that would be the main impediment. The math for calculating the interference patterns is almost trivial, but the scale is massive. Doing it in real-time would still require quite high-power setups, as you would have to calculate hundreds of rays per "pixel".

Re: Looking Glass – A new type of holographic interface

#80

Post by hateful » Wed, Jul 25, 2018, 2:50 PM UTC

DubiousPusher wrote: post #40

westoncb wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right. This is essentially meaningless: "Now that GPUs can reliably generate 60 FPS ...." That depends entirely on what you're rendering. You could reliably hit over 60 FPS for decades—for some content. And now you can still render at .000000001 FPS for other content. Saying "GPUs can generate 60 FPS" is presenting the situation as if framerate were a function of hardware only, whereas the reality of the situa…

Yeah, this is total cart before the horse. Cards aren't built to target specifically 60fps. They're built to perform as many operations as possible. Then content creators push the card as hard as they can while attempting to maintain 60fps. The graphics engine authors out there are always clamouring for more ops with active plans of how to use them. So any extra memory of ops the GPU makers provide will almost immedi…

I should have said something different and not even mentioned a specific framerate. What I meant to say is that GPUs now-a-days are able to most rendering with ease, but the product in this link will near a lot more.