To carry on our exploration of the 3D technology world, here is a video that demonstrates a Minority Report style interface. Lately there have been lots of critical breakthroughs in 3D home entertainment and interactive touch sensitive systems, put these all together and you get an amazing way to interact with your computer (although you may look a bit of a plonker waving your hands in the air).

Obscura Digital uses a 3D holographic projection system with multi-touch software to create an interface that rivals Nintendo Wii on speed. Using this system will be a pretty good work out, once you have read the health warnings and limbered up you can swim through your photos and draw squiggly line to your heart’s content.

This is obviously just the start of things, but what a start!

[Source: Engadget, Obscura Blog]

When I saw the second Back to the Future with the holomax and the hologram of the cartoon Jaws attacking people as they went by, I wish that technology was available now! 3D holograms floating in the air always seemed magical when seen in movies like Star Wars but they may be a reality sooner than thought.

Scientists have been messing with lasers for years, trying to get a step closer to that elusive moving 3D floating hologram. Last month, a team of researchers at the University of Arizona proved that bouncing laser light around to create 3D images is not a dead end field. The critical breakthrough could bring full-sized 3D holograms into your sitting room. Read on for more information.

The breakthrough enables holograms to be rewritable for the first time. This means the 3D image can be refreshed many times a second, which is vital for creating a 3D movie. As you know, to create the illusion of a moving picture several individual images all slightly different to each over are displayed in quick succession. This tricks the brain into thinking the image is actually moving.

To do this for holographic images Nasser Peyghambarian, chairman of photonics and lasers at Arizona University said the holographic video would require the image to be rewritten at 50 times per second. Unfortunately the current technology only rewrites at about one image per minute so there is a little way to go before it replaces your HDTV but it is one step closer.

Watching a holographic video with current technology would be similar to watching video which comes back from old web cams over the internet, interesting but slow.

[Source: nj.com via Gizmodo]