Cheoptics360: the future of 3D video is here
By Thomas Ricker 
posted November 2nd 2006 8:11AM
posted November 2nd 2006 8:11AM
[Thanks, BrianMP]
posted November 2nd 2006 8:11AM
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They should show a STILL 3D image with the camera panning around, so we can see if the 3D effect is any good at all.
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I'm now waiting for the first report of someone being cought watching porn on this thing
That is insane... the Jetsons isn't too far off.
I saw this at Copenhagen airport a year ago, with a Toyota advert, pretty cool. Imagine this to go with your next console.
I have a message for you Obi-Wan Kanobi.
I see no evidence that this is 3d and not just a 2d image that is viewable from 360°. Which is cool, but not really what we were looking for. I'm guessing the concept is similar to if you are looking at yourself in a pair of mirrors that are at a 90° angle, you see yourself centered at the corner of the two mirrors. This instead might just be angled downward towards 4 projection screens, one for each side. It seems to be mostly transparent, so I'm guessing the 'mirrors' being used are just shiny glass/acrylic/whatever, so you see the bright reflection of the screen over the background
Now if they could figure out a way to make this 3d by using an angle filter or something, which seems like it would be hard but not impossible, that would be awesome.
I think Moogle is right. It's like a 2D sprite in 3D games. The 2D image always faces you.
Don't get me wrong this is HUGE but no 3D display.
Yep. The guy makes it sound like anything thrown in the machine is 3D but its simply a viewable 2D plane in 360 degrees. Or so it seems.
I'm with Moogle - not 3D. If you think about it, each video has a LOT of "black" (non-projected light) which, thanks to no background, makes it seem more like it's floating.
Give us a solid background (like any TV show, movie or game) and it won't look the same.
Ok Ok, so it is just a 2d image being displayed in a 3d volume, a sprite of something yes, BUT what if you dropped a few sensors into the invironment that could tell the users position relitive to the screen? Then -while you wouldn't be able to tell depth anymore than a 2d image- you would be able to interact with it like a 3d item. The software would need to handle a 3d item and rotations, but display a person in this, and as you walk around to their back, it would then be displaying their back. It would be like a one eyed persons perception of the real world, no depth discernable but still 3d.
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This is insane!! Think of the millions of applications for something like this. Concerts, Gaming, Imax replacement, museums, advertising, any kind of presentation, teaching, graphic design, ... the list is endless.
I wonder if they will be able to make a desktop size version. I don't care what the cost is. I WANT IT!!
Reminds me of those parabolic-mirror dishes with the hole in the top--the quarter or marble is "floating" in the hole. Beautifully rendered. Amazing future for it--integrated into an MRI system, chemical modeling, etc.
Seems to me that's exactly what this is :D I thought of that right off. I think this is just a larger scale implementation of that concept.
why is the universal logo still forward readable from the front abd back of the display? shouldnt it be reversed? wait for it to flash back up near the end.
Well the video looks pretty cool, that's for sure.
Coming soon to some hyper-rich guy near you!
More videos here:
http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-gadget/video-cheoptics360-holographic-display-system-demo
I agree with the posters on the 3Dness - seems like its kinda 2.5D. The image fronts do seem to follow the camera, and the pan angles are mostly small.
On 1 hand, you can argue that it's difficutl to truly tell if it's 3D or 2D since we are afterall looking at it via 2D medium.
However.... How can they show 3D content with things like movie-video content which are 2D from the start. Can't take a 2D video feed and miraculously extrapulate what it's 3D counterpart should be. (Yes, you CAN do that with a still image with multiple angle shots than morph/merge together, but that's not we're talking about here).
Adam
www.bridgednetworks.com
They should show a STILL 3D image with the camera panning around, so we can see if the 3D effect is any good at all.
Annoying.
If they're rotating and moving the image while the camera is panning, we have no idea if it's any good. We can pan a camera in front of a flat display with a rotating 3D image on the display and it will end up looking like it's rotating in 3D space.
Otherwise it's a very cheap parlor trick. Show us a NON-rotating image, pan around it, and then we can tell what kind of (1) opacity (2) distortion the images have.
I beg to differ.
A)it's not a parlor trick
B)it's certainly not cheap :)
Honestly this is great for advertising and presentations, concerts, huge logos etc. and it's going to make a killing in that market but it's not 3D yet.
Googling around for 3D displays I came upon this:
http://www.holografika.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEhCSaCekDI&mode=related&search=
THAT is Holographic display
.....you're my only hope.
to adam.geffner:
Actually, there are no less than four major universities, including MIT, which are working on computer extrapolation of three dimensional space from two dimensional images. So far, one of the computers has successfully modelled multiple three dimensional images from various two dimensional pictures. They do require a super computer in order to make all the proper calculations, and from what I gathered reading about the articles, it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 million lines of code to be able to turn images into 3d models. And while the technology is far from perfect (there were some very bad renderings of the 3d space in a couple of the pictures), it is starting to look really good. Not only was it able to exrapolate basic 3d mechanisms, but the camera was able to turn to a 90 degree angle. Not pure 3d, but getting there very quickly. With their software, I venture it would take 5-6 images of a building to turn it into a complete 3d model with very minimal rendering issues.
I've given it some more thought, and I'm annoyed.
I think they should call it "Cheatoptics 360"...
1) Obviously, it can't be true 3D, because there is no way to produce true 3D without all the visual information, which you can't really have, unless the image is 100% CGI, produced from a model. You can't passively record all angles simultaneously (unless you do some sort of Terahertz-wave tomography, which is... never mind.
2) The display quality looks like garbage, reminiscent of holograms from Star Wars Episode I.
3) Opacity. What do objects placed in front of each other do? This display does nothing that's really "3D". It's really misleading.
I'm sure somebody might find a purpose for this technology in some niche... but I think they're really, really being deceptive about what this does. Most 3D displays are a visual trick (2 cameras) to create the illusion of depth. These guys seem like they're doing even less than THAT... plus giving you a grainy image.
Ah right yes i'm sure you can see perfectly clearly what the image quality is like from a YOUTUBE VIDEO.
seriously does the US invent anything anymore?
not that i know of
It's not like they stopped. They just didn't start yet.
I wish they would display a SINGLE STATIC polygon, and then pan the camera around it showing that it was in fact showing the sides of the polygon.
Because what this says to me is it's kinda like a multi-monitor setup, but instead of being wrapped around you/your head, it's flipped inside out. And with 4 sources, it's a pretty craptacular one.
Also, it's dark in there. Who the hell is going to be able to see this in the noon-day sun?
BOLLOCKS I SAY!
Yes it is real. A similar tech was used in a performance by Jesper Just (a Dutch artist) in NYC last year:
http://thebrooklynrail.org/archives/DEC05/ART/performa.html
beat me to the Star Wars reference.....grrr.....
As far as I can tell, this thing can do true 3d...you see this when the universal logo comes up for the first time; there's an obvious difference between video input and 3d input (although I do definitely agree they should show two fly-arounds, one for video, one for CG).
Video input is just a plane within the pyramid (and how could it be more than that without the extra information, as noted above?), but 3d input (like the phone, the shoe and the rotating pyramids) is projected in 3d, spatially inside the pyramid.
Cool thing, but I wonder how much the display medium (the pyramid in which everything is projected) costs, what material it actually is and how it is manufactured.
...looks an awful lot like what we saw Morbius use in the Krell labratory in the 1956 classic "Forbidden Planet" :->
Cant wait to see this thing in time square. :)
Seems like an awful lot of work just to make a 2d image seem to float... i'd wager there's more to it than that. ...at least an illusion of depth, even it it does work like a sprite.
Well, the images that they were showing on that screen were probably orignally filmed in 2-D. Therefore, unless you use multiple cameras to film the original footage, you can't display a 360 degree view of a object. But I agree that on some of the animations it wasn't that impresssive of a display. It didn't look like true 3-D
Wow.
Is that LaLa from Tiki Bar?
It is not 3D. its a 2D display with a very wide viewing angle (i.e. 360 degrees)
Why does engadget keep mentioning 3D??? It's really misleading.
What I wanna ask is how the image looks outdoors, when there is sun?
Impressive !!!!
If anyone knows what the background music is, I'd be interested!
I believe the "converted" images (like the Universal symbol) and the videos of the people are 2D. The same image projected from all four angles.
However, with CGI you could (and apparently they do) produce a true 3D image.
Someone posted this link earlier: http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-gadget/video-cheoptics360-holographic-display-system-demo
Go to "Video 2" and watch carefully as the camera pans around the rotating shoe display and rotating phone display. You actually see the contuance of the rotating object from the new angle.
I agree with the posters above that it's nothing more than a 2D image that is viewable in 360 degrees, nothing more. It's like Time Traveler on a large scale. Impressive, but not really innovative.
Actually, I believe this can actually show 3D, as opposed to a "sprite" that is always facing you (ala Doom). If you look closely, when the Universal screen is displayed you can see it is only facing one direction--it does not appear to rotate when the camera is panning. It's hard to tell from the video though, and their website is slower than molasses.
As said earlier... *NOT* 3D, but 2D that is viewable from all sides.
Example. I'm seeing the front of that japanese girl dancing. A guy standing on any other side is also seeing the front of that japanese girl dancing.
*NOT 3D*
This is not entirely new. Does anyone else remember Sega's Holosseum and Time Traveler acarde machines? It's the same concept, but they use several mirrors instead of a dome, so you can stand at the same level. The image is still identical, no matter which side you watch it from. A static object will appear to "follow" you by facing you as you walk around. This breaks the effect somewhat and the only way to avoid it is to show images with the camera constantly spinning around it.
Here are the Sega hologram laserdisc games which used very simlar technology:
http://klov.com/game_detail.php?letter=B&game_id=10124
http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?letter=H&game_id=8132
Would everyone please just stop complaining? I understand that it is not true 3D, but don't be so quick to dismiss it. Being able to see the same image from 360 degrees is still a very useful design. Think if you had this thing in your living room. The traditional way for a group of people to watch a movie would be to have everyone in the room facing the same wall, but this can be placed in the center of the room and everyone can sit around it (like a campfire). This would also be awesome for gaming because think how much better it would be to look your opponents in the eye while you kick their asses.
no it's not 3d like a hologram, but it's 3d like a 3d computer display. the images would look 3d without any funny glasses or viewing angle limitations. there is a subtle difference between a 3d image and a holographic image. for producing 3d images, it works perfectly.
Check out the link that wickedjimmy posted. It shows both holographic type images (i.e. 3d in 2d space like those old physics class experiements with lasers and holographic film) and true 3d images. Seems it's capable of both depending on the application. Wouldn't want to display the Universal logo backwards or people couldn't read it...Same with the Toyota ad. But, non-text makes sense to spin around in 3d space...
Wow, a reflection of a 2d video monitor on a pane of glass.
This is completely bogus. No new technology here. It is absolutely not a "volumetric display".
It's four triangular-shaped panes of glass. With a video monitor on the floor under each of them. What you're seeing is a reflection on the glass of four video monitors in the base.
It's a peppers-ghost gag. The "technology" dates back to 1862.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper's_Ghost
You got fished-in by an overly-enthusiastic press-release.