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Voxon hologram volumetric display (2019)

76 points by itronitron 6y ago

NiceWayToDoIT 6y ago
I guess, only thing left now is to wait to scale, so price will drop to the something affordable.
- bhawks 6y ago
  I actually thought the 10k price tag was extremely reasonable based on the article write up. Yes it's beyond most personal users - but that is not out of the reach of even a small group of people (be it education, maker spaces, or small business). I would have expected an extra 0 on the price tag.
zevv 6y ago
"[...] a single piece of rear projection glass that's being flung back and forth in the air at 15 cycles per second [...]" So, how does that not cause huge air friction, turbulence and noise?
- ekianjo 6y ago
  It does make a bit of noise. (seen one before)
  - Blammar 6y ago
    ? I assumed the globe was to maintain a vacuum. Huh.
    - andi999 6y ago
      Main purpose is not to cut of your arm.
- newman8r 6y ago
  Seems reminiscent of the Baird television with the mechanical Nipkow disc. Is there any tech on the horizon that can replace this in the same way tubes beat out the mechanical TV?
toxicFork 6y ago
I'm very excited for hologram tech, from AR (Magic Leap, Hololens) to more "in-world" like voxon and looking glass[0]. It's great to see progress and competition in the space. [0] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lookingglass/looking-glass-portrait https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lookingglass/looking-gl...
- gaudat 6y ago
  A friend of mine tried the Looking Galss. It looks 3D but the resolution is really bad, like 320x240. The display uses a dot lenticular film in front of a normal LCD display. The thick plastic and the lit up bezel is for giving 3D clues to fool the eye. The pixels has to be shared among all possible viewing angles so this technology is mainly limited by display ppi and rendering power I think.
Prcmaker 6y ago
I was really impressed when I got to check these out in person. My main concern though is noise and 'frame rate'. It wasn't loud for a machine shop, but was loud for an office. Id love to know a way to increase the frame rate without hitting that 'audible range' issue.
nl 6y ago
My friends run this company. It’s real, and it works pretty well. You can use it for medical imaging which is pretty useful when looking at eg a tumour in the brain.
- thechao 6y ago
  Tell your buddy to hybridize the two designs: a “donut” for the radial part, and an up-down mirror for the donut’s hole. You’ll have a nontrivial meshing problem at the interface between the two.
- harrylepotter 6y ago
  Oh hi Nick. I know you... And Gavin... Small world.
  - nl 6y ago
    I know Gav a little but hired Will maybe 10 years ago for a programming job when they were working on this in his shed. And yeah small world!
margo209320 6y ago
This is cool and it looks pretty, but what is the actual use for such a display? Today we look at 3D models on 2D screens by rotating them, using a mouse or similar input device, which works perfectly fine.
- jrootabega 6y ago
  Cool Star Wars rides at Disney.
gaudat 6y ago
We planned to build a volumetric display with a LED panel sweeping a cylindrical volume a while ago. In the end it was dropped because we underestimated how much pixels we need to push to that display. Even with the 1920Hz refresh rate of a 128x64 LED billboard panel we can only achieve like 5Hz volume refresh rate. Not to mention the heavy flickering and danger of a quickly spinning hunk of electronics. Volumetric display may be the future if we can couple a GPU directly to a quick enough display device. Until then we are stuck with VR.
jiveturkey 6y ago
https://youtu.be/FVYoWsxqK8g?t=36 https://youtu.be/FVYoWsxqK8g?t=36 This is unix! I know this!
jiveturkey 6y ago
as well: https://www.lume-pad.com/ https://www.lume-pad.com/ https://lookingglassfactory.com/ https://lookingglassfactory.com/
Impossible 6y ago
This is really cool, but a lot of the comparison to VR or AR HMDs is parroting VR cliches (it's anti-social, you need a headset, etc). I do believe a display could be interesting for some use cases, but one of the strengths of VR is handtracking and tracked controllers. VR wasn't particularly interesting without an input system and that's regularly disconnected by both VR skeptics and VR lovers. A volumetric display you could reach into (think Black Panther "black sand") would be amazing.
gildandstain 6y ago
Correct me if I’m wrong, but this setup can’t render non-transparent volumes, at least when the occluding surface is darker. The transparent volumes it renders do look great, and seem to make sense for medical/mechanical problem-solving and Disney rides.

76 points by itronitron 6y ago

NiceWayToDoIT 6y ago

I guess, only thing left now is to wait to scale, so price will drop to the something affordable.

bhawks 6y ago
I actually thought the 10k price tag was extremely reasonable based on the article write up. Yes it's beyond most personal users - but that is not out of the reach of even a small group of people (be it education, maker spaces, or small business). I would have expected an extra 0 on the price tag.

zevv 6y ago

"[...] a single piece of rear projection glass that's being flung back and forth in the air at 15 cycles per second [...]" So, how does that not cause huge air friction, turbulence and noise?

ekianjo 6y ago
It does make a bit of noise. (seen one before)
- Blammar 6y ago
  ? I assumed the globe was to maintain a vacuum. Huh.
  - andi999 6y ago
    Main purpose is not to cut of your arm.
newman8r 6y ago
Seems reminiscent of the Baird television with the mechanical Nipkow disc. Is there any tech on the horizon that can replace this in the same way tubes beat out the mechanical TV?

toxicFork 6y ago

I'm very excited for hologram tech, from AR (Magic Leap, Hololens) to more "in-world" like voxon and looking glass[0]. It's great to see progress and competition in the space. [0] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lookingglass/looking-glass-portrait https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lookingglass/looking-gl...

gaudat 6y ago
A friend of mine tried the Looking Galss. It looks 3D but the resolution is really bad, like 320x240. The display uses a dot lenticular film in front of a normal LCD display. The thick plastic and the lit up bezel is for giving 3D clues to fool the eye. The pixels has to be shared among all possible viewing angles so this technology is mainly limited by display ppi and rendering power I think.

Prcmaker 6y ago

I was really impressed when I got to check these out in person. My main concern though is noise and 'frame rate'. It wasn't loud for a machine shop, but was loud for an office. Id love to know a way to increase the frame rate without hitting that 'audible range' issue.

nl 6y ago

My friends run this company. It’s real, and it works pretty well. You can use it for medical imaging which is pretty useful when looking at eg a tumour in the brain.

thechao 6y ago
Tell your buddy to hybridize the two designs: a “donut” for the radial part, and an up-down mirror for the donut’s hole. You’ll have a nontrivial meshing problem at the interface between the two.
harrylepotter 6y ago
Oh hi Nick. I know you... And Gavin... Small world.
- nl 6y ago
  I know Gav a little but hired Will maybe 10 years ago for a programming job when they were working on this in his shed. And yeah small world!

margo209320 6y ago

This is cool and it looks pretty, but what is the actual use for such a display? Today we look at 3D models on 2D screens by rotating them, using a mouse or similar input device, which works perfectly fine.

jrootabega 6y ago
Cool Star Wars rides at Disney.

gaudat 6y ago

We planned to build a volumetric display with a LED panel sweeping a cylindrical volume a while ago. In the end it was dropped because we underestimated how much pixels we need to push to that display. Even with the 1920Hz refresh rate of a 128x64 LED billboard panel we can only achieve like 5Hz volume refresh rate. Not to mention the heavy flickering and danger of a quickly spinning hunk of electronics. Volumetric display may be the future if we can couple a GPU directly to a quick enough display device. Until then we are stuck with VR.

jiveturkey 6y ago

https://youtu.be/FVYoWsxqK8g?t=36 https://youtu.be/FVYoWsxqK8g?t=36 This is unix! I know this!

jiveturkey 6y ago

as well: https://www.lume-pad.com/ https://www.lume-pad.com/ https://lookingglassfactory.com/ https://lookingglassfactory.com/

Impossible 6y ago

This is really cool, but a lot of the comparison to VR or AR HMDs is parroting VR cliches (it's anti-social, you need a headset, etc). I do believe a display could be interesting for some use cases, but one of the strengths of VR is handtracking and tracked controllers. VR wasn't particularly interesting without an input system and that's regularly disconnected by both VR skeptics and VR lovers. A volumetric display you could reach into (think Black Panther "black sand") would be amazing.

gildandstain 6y ago

Correct me if I’m wrong, but this setup can’t render non-transparent volumes, at least when the occluding surface is darker. The transparent volumes it renders do look great, and seem to make sense for medical/mechanical problem-solving and Disney rides.