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| Crystal Ball Display Makes 3D Models Look Real |
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posted by Editor on Friday December 14, @12:54PM
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Actuality Systems has developed a 3D volumetric display that can make computer-generated models appear as solid objects inside of a volleyball-size clear plastic dome. The models appear to be real, space-filling objects that can be seen by multiple users without the use of goggles or other auxiliary devices (see photographs). The device supports resolutions up to 768 by 768 pixels at a depth of 198 slices in 8 colors. The slices are projected 24 times a second onto a translucent screen that rotates inside of the dome at 730 revolutions per minute, which creates the illusion that the projected objects are real (see spec sheet (PDF)). Right now, the device is used by biotech companies such as Structural GenomiX to visualize protein structures.
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On the up side, this device is capable of hundreds of colors at lower resolutions. 8 colors really is pretty limiting. However, I wonder what the contrast and brightness are like - all the pictures show a dark room. Also, a big high speed spinning screen sounds like it might be noisy. No goggles requires, but do I need earplugs?
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Interesting. Kinda low resolution for CAD guys used to 1600x1200 screen resolution; I kinda doubt the depth would make up for it, but I wish em luck. Molecular or medical seems a better first target. For some reason they seem to be playing down the medical possibilities. They'd probably need 256 slices wide or something like that.
At first I thought their choice of custom graphics hardware (vs, say an off-the-shelf 3Dlabs/Nvidia card) was strange, but it looks like they needed 1 GB memory support which I don't think the commodity graphics guys are doing yet (I can think of one possible high-end exception.) A DSP chip looks underpowered for 3D OpenGL-ish tasks. 3D is a strange mix of floating point, fixed point, integer and memory access tasks that isn't done that well by generic chips.
Also interesting is seeing that they chose Mesa, the open source OpenGL clone. I'm not sure how they're going to support commercial apps with that. Do any commercial apps use Mesa? Looks like a choice one would only make to minimize development costs of the product, not a choice to maximize successful marketing.
As vaporware due in 2002 at an unspecified price, we'll see how it goes. Still, it looks like a definite step forward from the red-only LED spinning displays I remember seeing at SIGGRAPH a few years ago.
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