Can anyone explain to a layperson what produces the actual "glow" in thin air?
The best I can do on my own is that the laser beam(s?) is(are?) focused on a point and briefly converts some of the air at that point into plasma, which glows? (on its own? because of the laser?) How hot does that get?
I was thinking the same thing. Wikipedia tells us that a flame is visible at 525 °C (977 °F). (I don't know if this is relevant as they talk about a 'plasma' and not a flame.) This might sound too hot to be safe but it only has to be that temperature for a very short time so presumably the energy density doesn't have to be very high.
I'm not saying that its "new" new. I'm just glad to hear about a 3d technology that's not just a bunch of hype that turns out to be the "Pepper's Ghost" illusion again.
"The emission time of the laser pulse light is on the order of a nano-second (10-9 sec). Our device uses 1 pulse for each dot to that the human eye can recognize plasma emission by utilizing the after-image effect, and enables a 100 dot/sec display."
Still not quite ready for prime time. 100 dots/sec isn't enough to make a display, but rather, a skeletal dot array.
Q. Does "scanning" have the same meaning as in "raster scanning", where you cover the area (volume) in a set pattern? If so, I would have thought a vector approach would work better here...
Q. What is a "motor orbit"?
"The linear motor system enables the position of the laser focal point to be varied by high-speed scanning of a lens set on the motor orbit. Incorporation of this system makes the image scanning in the direction of the z-axis possible. For scanning in the x and y axis directions, conventional galvanometric mirrors are used."
It took me a while to realize that it's not the intersection of two lasers, but the focal length of one laser. I didn't realize you could do that with coherent light, but of course you can.
Instead of a raster or vector approach how about an array of lasers all with fixed focal lengths that project into a predetermined 3D viewing space? Kind of like a 3D LCD setup. Tbh they've probably already thought of these ideas. As Obi-Wan says: "Patience".
I think that's a good idea, but wow too expensive! Why not have a laser for each voxel in 1000x1000x1000 space? :-) Seriously, that may be the kind of breakthrough needed for this research to be commercially viable.
Though all this 3d jumble, with the new Aurora concept browser and all...I personally feel its nice but too much. I can't imagine reading YC News in anything other than 2d.
The best I can do on my own is that the laser beam(s?) is(are?) focused on a point and briefly converts some of the air at that point into plasma, which glows? (on its own? because of the laser?) How hot does that get?