January
10, 2000
Tucked
inside a nondescript building in Manhattan's Silicon Alley, a group of engineers
is thinking outside the box. Literally! Dimensional Media Associates is working
on a 3-D display. No big deal, except that viewers don't have to wear geeky
glasses or goggles.
The
technology may enable employees to teleconference in 3-D, consumers to
"touch" goods for sale on the Web, and medical researchers to
visualize protein-folding models. A visit to the company's research lab isn't
for the faint of heart. Walk inside and you hear an amplified heartbeat.
The
heart--actually a high-resolution 3-D image of it--is suspended a few inches in
front of one of the prototype display stations. A set of surgeon's calipers
attached to a force-feedback contraption is nearby. A tug on one of the vessels
pulls it slightly, and you feel the twitch of the muscle in response. (A
"stiffness" parameter is built into the software.) Enough cardiac
surgery for today.
Floating
Images
Alan Sullivan, chief science officer at Dimensional Media Associates (DMA), is
overflowing with enthusiasm about the potential of the Multiplanar Volumetric
Display that his team is developing. The initial applications are for medical
imaging, automobile manufacturing, and other high-end applications, but Sullivan
says that prototypes of 3-D displays will be on desktops in six months.
Among
more mainstream applications, a 3-D display could assist financial analysts in
visualizing trends based on enormous amounts of data, and computer games could
take on a whole new dimension. But once 3-D hits the Internet, the fun really
begins. Web retailers could let you outfit a model with clothing you're
interested in buying and you'd get the full effect, not a flat simulation on
your monitor's screen.
Graphics
cards today have 3-D features, but the 3-D data is trapped inside the card. Once
the data travels to the monitor, the third dimension is squeezed onto a
two-dimensional surface. The effect is merely simulated 3-D. DMA has figured out
how to liberate the 3-D data so images don't just seem to float in space, but
actually float in space.
DMA has
kept a low profile so far and isn't divulging details about its technology,
since patents are pending. According to Sullivan, the Multiplanar Volumetric
Display uses not one plane of image data, as conventional displays do, but 12
planes, each depicting a different depth. The end result is essentially a stack
of images floating either a few inches in front of the display or inside the
display, as if you're watching fish inside an aquarium. The display uses an
array of optical components, such as parabolic mirrors and beam splitters to
collect, focus, and project light in space to form volumetric images. Since the
images have volume, they're measured in voxels-volume picture elements, rather
than pixels.
DMA began
as an R&D lab producing advanced visualization systems for the government
and for the medical field. Now, it's striking out into commercial territory. The
company has installations of what it calls an "animatronic" 3-D
display that projects a 3-D image of a product, a Kirin beer bottle, an Adidas
sneaker, a diamond watch-into thin air.
DMA is
currently working with Silicon Graphics to develop a desktop display. The cost,
says Sullivan, would be a few thousand dollars. While the display industry is
moving to flat panels, DMA is moving in the opposite direction. A 3-D desktop
display would take up about the same amount of space as a monitor does today.
The technology doesn't work with flat panels. Future prototypes may have 50
rather than 12 planes, offer 24-bit color, and have five times as many voxels.
The most far-reaching goal is the complete reinvention of the user interface.
Instead of moving files with a mouse, you would actually pick them up to move
them. The mind boggles at the potential of a holographic interface. Can the
'Holodeck', as depicted onboard the starship Enterprise of the popular
Science-Fiction series ST:The Next Generation, be far behind?!
