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Volume – The world’s first personal volumetric display

lookingglassfactory.com

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Re: Volume – The world’s first personal volumetric display

#51

Post by anotheryou »

Animats wrote: post #45
iamleppert wrote: post #35

They say it's not a parlor trick, but it's nowhere near true holography or anything like it. True holography records the object's wavefront as a flat interference pattern, encoding the phase information from the object (and also creating a very precise model of its surface), creating a diffraction grating which can then be used to replay the identical wave when illuminated by a suitable reference source of light. Thi…

There's a small company in Austin, Zebra Imaging, which generates CG holograms on big pieces of photographic film.[1] Those are real holograms. The military buys them as 3D models in a flat, portable form, and they're sometimes used in place of architectural models. Some people still take photographic holograms using a big flash laser. (This was a thing about 40 years ago. One guy still does it.) Almost everything el…

They look pretty good with the right lighting, but objects must never be clipped by the papers edge. So you have to keep your 3d inside an imaginary pyramid on top of the medium.

Re: Volume – The world’s first personal volumetric display

#52

Post by shultays »

tobr wrote: post #9

Despite them doing their best to cover it up with quick editing and cherry picked angles, it's clear this has very low depth resolution and foggy picture quality. If this only uses light, how would it deal with occlusion? It would be impossible to put a dark object in front of a lighter one, right?

It says "2 million 3d pixels", which is pretty low in my opinion too

Re: Volume – The world’s first personal volumetric display

#54

Post by Retric »

cma wrote: post #43
tobr wrote: post #9

Despite them doing their best to cover it up with quick editing and cherry picked angles, it's clear this has very low depth resolution and foggy picture quality. If this only uses light, how would it deal with occlusion? It would be impossible to put a dark object in front of a lighter one, right?

Yes, kinect 2 has around 200,000 pixels from the depth camera (512x424). I believe they said this thing only has 3,000,000 voxels . That's like 145x145x145. Barely enough to have a few voxelized Windows 3.1 desktop icons bouncing around. It definitely seems like just something cool to have sitting around at this stage, like a lava lamp or something. As long as they can keep improving the res, it could eventually be u…

~1500px X 104px X 10px which probably is enough to be interesting and of course this is a gen 1 device. I suspect bandwidth is a major issue as this is already close to 1080p pixels.

Re: Volume – The world’s first personal volumetric display

#55

Post by Retric »

anotheryou wrote: post #51
Animats wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a small company in Austin, Zebra Imaging, which generates CG holograms on big pieces of photographic film.[1] Those are real holograms. The military buys them as 3D models in a flat, portable form, and they're sometimes used in place of architectural models. Some people still take photographic holograms using a big flash laser. (This was a thing about 40 years ago. One guy still does it.) Almost everything el…

They look pretty good with the right lighting, but objects must never be clipped by the papers edge. So you have to keep your 3d inside an imaginary pyramid on top of the medium.

That's just a question of how wide the paper is.

Re: Volume – The world’s first personal volumetric display

#56

Post by anotheryou »

Retric wrote: post #55
anotheryou wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They look pretty good with the right lighting, but objects must never be clipped by the papers edge. So you have to keep your 3d inside an imaginary pyramid on top of the medium.

That's just a question of how wide the paper is.

Practically: if the paper is wider, it will probably lower your viewing angle and that stuff is expensive!

Re: Volume – The world’s first personal volumetric display

#57

Post by [deleted] »

iLoch wrote: post #13

I'll start by saying this is a really interesting device, and a very impressive technological feat. However, I have some major criticisms too: The only advantage I see to this vs. something like HoloLens is that it doesn't require a head mounted display. Unfortunately for this project, that's not as big a barrier for serious companies as they need it to be. In time I think this "advantage" will also dwindle due to sh…

[deleted]

Re: Volume – The world’s first personal volumetric display

#58

Post by tobr »

dezt wrote: post #48
tobr wrote: post #9

Despite them doing their best to cover it up with quick editing and cherry picked angles, it's clear this has very low depth resolution and foggy picture quality. If this only uses light, how would it deal with occlusion? It would be impossible to put a dark object in front of a lighter one, right?

I am on the Looking Glass team on Volume. I can answer you. As far as resolution: each slice is about 104px high resolution in it's current state, the width is about 1500px in resolution. The current depth resolution is 10. Because Volume currently has 10 slices. We do use some tricks to reduce the apparently low depth resolution, for example we allow a dev to set settings to 'overdraw' the slice so slices draw parts…

Thanks for the answers! I think it looks like interesting tech and it could be fun to play around with it, despite the limitations.

But I really think you should reconsider the messaging around the product. I'd imagine most of your potential customers would be tech-savvy enough to ask the questions raised in this thread. Right now your marketing material is making us suspicious; it looks like you have something to hide.

I think you'd be much better off if you were transparent about the technical limitations, so as not to be mistaken for another Cicret Bracelet (https://youtu.be/KbgvSi35n6o). Getting that out of the way would allow you to focus your story on the possibilities, why this tech is cool (because it is!).

Also, judging by your description some of the material on the site is very deceptive, such as the animation with the horse. It appears to be very high resolution, there's no "slicing" even at acute viewing angles, and it has dark objects occluding lighter ones. That's not really OK.

Re: Volume – The world’s first personal volumetric display

#59

Post by dezt »

tobr wrote: post #58
dezt wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am on the Looking Glass team on Volume. I can answer you. As far as resolution: each slice is about 104px high resolution in it's current state, the width is about 1500px in resolution. The current depth resolution is 10. Because Volume currently has 10 slices. We do use some tricks to reduce the apparently low depth resolution, for example we allow a dev to set settings to 'overdraw' the slice so slices draw parts…

Thanks for the answers! I think it looks like interesting tech and it could be fun to play around with it, despite the limitations. But I really think you should reconsider the messaging around the product. I'd imagine most of your potential customers would be tech-savvy enough to ask the questions raised in this thread. Right now your marketing material is making us suspicious; it looks like you have something to hi…

Thanks for the feedback. Knowing precisely what threw you off is super valuable to know, and I will directly tell the team members in charge of marketing about it. I can also tell you for sure that there was no intention to deceive or misrepresent. In fact, anyone at all who is in the NYC area is welcome to see and judge Volume for themselves at our Brooklyn lab. We have a 'library' set up exactly for that purpose - to let the public come see and play with it! :)

However, I also definitely see what you are saying (and I will push for the horse in particular to be changed or updated). If there are any other things that threw you off, please do post in reply.

For anyone interested to drop by the lab and see Volume for themselves feel free to email: future@lookingglassfactory.com (the lab is at the North tip of Greenpoint Brooklyn, across the bridge from the Vernon-Jackson stop on the 7 train)

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