Obscura Digital projects multi-touch "hologram," blows all sorts of minds
By Joshua Topolsky 
posted Aug 5th 2008 12:25AM
posted Aug 5th 2008 12:25AM
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HOLY CRAP THAT'S AWESOME
how do they make the hologram?
Essentially, they're projecting onto a sheet of specially treated glass sitting in front of the user. The 'multi touch' is probably a 2D grid of laser beams, which are broken when he pushes his hands forward beyond a certain point.
Obviously they are on a holodeck.
Check out Total Immersion's developments (you can start here: http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=526&doc_id=160536&f_src=flffour ) ... they have some truly amazing stuff. I think they call it 'augmented reality' and it's great.
i definitely agree this is a great indication of the future of computing.
i do find it humorous that whenever companies demonstrate these multi touch surfaces they act like we have nothing better to do but sit around and move around our photo libraries, making the pictures bigger and smaller...of course i realize that's just for demonstration purposes, but still.
JEDI!!!!
I kind of hoped for more, yawn...
OMFGWTFBBQ!
Total iPhone clone...
[/sarcasm]
Doesn't look very responsive.
looks more responsive then my current multi touch holographic display.
Well, seems to be a pretty new thing they are doing.. Its about as responsive as your webcam beach ball slapping game was about 5 years ago.. So that's pretty impressive and we know.. It only gets better.. Right Nvidia??
NOT
It's even better if you just imagine the hologram isn't there and you're just watching him flail around.
Lol, I did watch the video again after reading the video, and it does look funny.
What are the images projected onto?? And can the images be seen from any angle. How does this thing work. /sigh my curiousity needs to be satiated.
I think it is probably some kind of semi opaqued or specially coated glass like the good sir said up a couple comments. Wish it was just air :(
Incredible.
Now the question remains, how long before I can actually buy one?
you fail again..
why's he so fisty?
he has to be holding something thats talking to a computer.. hey who knows maybe its a Wii controller. but then again probably not
Yeah, he has to be holding something otherwise he wouldn't be able (anyway i can think of) to move without the pictures following him, they would just go back and forth. He must press a button, sorta like clicking and dragging...
Likely he's 'fisty' because there's a camera that looks for big pinkish-white blobs to act as 'cursors'. If you notice, he was wearing all black and standing in front of a black background. It's similar to how the wiimote looks for IR light, except instead of an invisible spectrum, the camera on the other side of the glass just looks for bright reflective light (i.e. the light bouncing to the camera off of his fists).
It might be in order to make it simpler for the computer to track...two fists (or blobs of light) versus ten fingers?
And you are my new 'pathetic'.
i truly hate you.. you mention 3g in about EVERY SINGLE POST. Why? why do you like looking like a douchebag? why are you stupid? why must you be able to reproduce? and most of all why do you exist?
signed from the person who hates you most of all
ian
You're funny! I'm sure people have told you that.
I hope you find what you're looking for at the bottom of that red cup!
Funny guy!
How do it know?
how do you speak English?
Kind of reminds me of minority report but without the glass.
This thing Fs minority report in the ass.
Neat trick... The hologram is probably made using a screen in the floor and a glass plate at 45 degreees in between the performer and the spectator. Just like those old ghost shows in the theaters... U remember those?
Youtube link for us iPhone users?
Should've got an N95 with its built in Flash player.
This thing is awesomw ^^
Maybe a bit slow in response, but i'm looking at this tecnology
like a window on the future :3
maybe you should stop trying to be special and USE A COMPUTER.
@ Gabe
Yeah, dude... you should seriously not say stuff like that. It makes us look bad.
[posted with love]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egAl6sNMaqE
that was pretty sweet...
A future without sore fingers is a win...
73721303129377972nd
dialed that, got your ansaphone - left you a msg
Were they using some sort of see-through screen to project it on, like the ghosts in disney's haunted house ride, or was it really projecting the images on nothing but air? If it was just air, that's flippin' insane.
I think that would kind of defeat the purpose of a "hologram"
wow this is awesome! would be cool for someone to make a demo of someone playing holographic game. thats one thing of the future i'm really looking forward to. just hand me my gun or sword and put me right in the action
I just don't get this. A laggy, disorganized scroll of randomly rotating, untagged photos you have to swim/scroll through. What is the application and utility?
Seconded. Honestly, I'm still waiting for someone to demonstrate a use for multi-touch tech that doesn't promote/depend on clutter and disorganization.
Don't get me wrong. It looks amazing (albeit laggy), but I think we ought to be working on "what's the point?" rather than "How can we make this more futuristic?"
Well I think the fact that it's a *hologram* sort of takes the whole utility thing out of the picture. I think it's more of a demonstration of what could be done in the future with this technology, not by any stretch of the mind something being designed for productivity. At least not yet.
I think.
I'm wonder why all these touch-screen demonstrators never seem to find a suitable photograph. Swivel, stretch, zoom, pan, yawn.
wow this is awesome! would be cool for someone to make a demo of someone playing holographic game. thats one thing of the future i'm really looking forward to. just hand me my gun or sword and put me right in the action ...... sorry if it double posts i saw my message here one min then it was gone so i'm sending it again
he's using a wii-mote. i mean really, who isn't these days?
demo is awesome, a bit repetitive. i wonder if touch technology will ever compensate for those wonderfully quick keyboard shortcuts that we've all come to love. afterall, i don't just want to throw the picture aside after i imperfectly resize it six different ways... i want to alt-f4 that b*tch.
I'm one of the interns there and I can promise you, it is not a wii-mote. Doesn't even look remotely white.
The technology to do this is actually pretty simple. I suspect it's doing pretty basic image processing that looks for blobs of bright objects, in this case, his hands and his face. The reason he's making fists is likely that the algorithm probably doesn't work so well with outstretched fingers. Once it finds the blobs, it just has to track their position and velocity over time.
I'm glad you got my joke... i guess i should've said something about the iphone, then it woulda been really funny.
It looks like a sweet device, and I envy your internship. i can't wait until i can stand in front of my computer like a conductor and tom cruise my way through pictures, videos and maps of the world (that was a minorty report reference, in case you missed it).
i hope the integration of these types of tehnologies are affordable and quickly implimented. and i hope theyre able to break the glass cealing of simple gestures and GUIs since this type of interface seems to lack complexity and user-controlled exactitude.
I'm glad you got my joke... i guess i should've said something about the iphone, then it woulda been really funny.
It looks like a sweet device, and I envy your internship. i can't wait until i can stand in front of my computer like a conductor and tom cruise my way through pictures, videos and maps of the world (that was a minorty report reference, in case you missed it).
i hope the integration of these types of tehnologies are affordable and quickly implimented. and i hope theyre able to break the glass cealing of simple gestures and GUIs since this type of interface seems to lack complexity and user-controlled exactitude.
Boringgggggggg........
What's the point of doing that?!?!?!
He looks bored himself at the end hahahahahaha
Its like minority report all over again, so awesome
come on people. This looks like a guy on a school stage waving his hands around and another video track put over the top, does nobody agree.
it looks really fake. the camera should have changed the position, so we see how the perspective changes. but as it looks now, this could really be some superimposed video-track over a stupid guy waving around.
No, nobody agrees.
Who are these jack asses that have infiltrated engadget lately!! Enough negative votes over a certain time frame should suspend your account for stupidity!
nope.
quick grab your tin hat!
mind = blown
mad 1337 skillz
cool...geez!!
I only see two planes- one in front of and one behind the presenter. I would hardly call this a hologram. (Now if he stepped through and object I'd be impressed.)
Ever think about how video games started? They were 2D for the longest time and only recently do we have technology that enables us to create fast moving 3D worlds on screen. It's the same here, it's a first step.Nothing more, nothing less. Wait another 5-10 years and then we'll probably see your fancy step through holograms. I don't need to see the Holo-Halo right now because I'm glad already there is Super Holo Mario Brothers.
So fake. It could have been more convincing if he held a Wii-mote to move those things around. Or better yet a glove like device like in minority report. He doesn't even have his eyes open (1:28), what's up with that!!
What would he need is eyes opened for? It's not like he's projecting the hologram with his mind or something. The system apparently traces his hands in 3D space so even Stevie Wonder could fucking operate this thing. It's a bit too sophisticated for a fake and a darkened stage setting is the ideal environment for clean shape recognition so I think this actually works. Wonder how they do the display anyway.
How can you see what your doing if your eyes are closed. Maybe b/c his eyes are closed that "...he's projecting the hologram with his mind or something" (^ v ^).
don't feed the trolls
Cactaur attacks w/ 1000 needles.
Where's the 3D? holograms are supposed to be 3D but all I see is a guy behind a see-through projection screen.
It looks cool but unfortunately nothing more than that.
I "Hate" his yellow teeth!
Did I ween?
DAMN YOU SINNN
I think he's got a wand.
I think that the gloves in Minority Report were potentially a smoother way to interface with a system like this. Maybe in a few years...
What's with the pant leg? I think the tech would be useful later on especially in medical applications where you would want to blow up the scans to read them (the resolution might be an issue)
The whole concept is that it's a concept. I'm sure eventually we'll stop using input devices as we know it; it's really about time for the mouse to retire; keyboard too...we should all just think real hard at the computer and hope it responds someday
It's totally cool and all, but seriously, how useful is a big haystack of photos as an interface? The multi-touch guys keep putting out demos showing people zipping through a pile of photos to do -- what exactly? Tilting a photo 5 degrees and sweeping it to the left isn't a real 'in demand' sort of feature, is it?
I suspect that if this interface was ever built as a real application, the most popular button would be the 'clean up album' button.
Man, I'm glad someone else put that out there. I've been thinking that very thing since I first saw MS do it with their surface demo.
I can see myself playing "holographic" solitaire with this instead of looking at photos. Then again watching "holographic" youtube would be nice.
We need a devise that is user friendly in user interface, HD display that consume less, less vulnerable to hostile environment, weighs less, costs even less and practical... I don't find any super big, super bling, multi-touch and always in prototype stage product that irritate my eyes.
The implications for the online porn industry are staggering.
Can everyone please stop saying hologram? In no way does that technology use holograms, it's just a fancy projection. In fact, in all honesty I'm surprised they're allowed to use the word. No denying that it's cool though.
Very impressive, I am currently looking for a practical cost effective similar to this which we want to use for commecial promotions etc.
Any ideas where I might find a 3D Holographic System. As I say this looks very impressive to me but I guess it priced out of the range for small medium size companies.
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