
Study produces 3D images that float - snr
https://news.byu.edu/news/better-hologram-byu-study-produces-3d-images-float-thin-air
======
iliis
Another method is to use a high-powered pulsed laser to create little balls of
plasma in mid-air: [https://www.popsci.com/secret-interactive-holograms-
plasma-a...](https://www.popsci.com/secret-interactive-holograms-plasma-and-
femtosecond-laser)

~~~
snr
Wow, the plasma-balls one's from 2015!

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dragonwriter
I feel like I've seen reports of research demonstration with near future
commercial possibility in this field every couple years since sometime in the
mid-1990s.

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TaylorAlexander
That’s the reporting. Ideally researchers should just say “we did this.” But
then they need continued funding so they like to say “we did this and we
believe with more research the commercial possibilities are promising.” And
then reporters hear this all and say “the Star Wars display is here now, and
soon you’ll have Princess Leia in your living room.”

Honestly I feel like the best solution is just to train everyone critical
thinking skills but I guess in practice that doesn’t seem to happen.

~~~
stuntkite
There are lots of ways to make star wars holograms that are much more
accessible than this. With our new depth sensors and some other really stupid
tricks you can achieve that. There's a reason Apple is hiring like crazy for
AR designers. We are pretty closer to in that future.

If you're looking for the bleeding edge of what's here now, RED[1] the camera
company is putting out a hologram cell phone probably like next month I guess
with a hologram display from a company literally called leia[2].

[1][https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/9/8/16272838/re...](https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/9/8/16272838/red-
hydrogen-one-holographic-display-leia)

[2][http://www.leiadisplay.com/](http://www.leiadisplay.com/)

~~~
thomastjeffery
From the FAQ:

> Is LEIA a hologram?

> Leia makes it possible to project an image in the air – an image through
> which you can put your hand or walk but it's not a 3D projection. The image
> is flat and thus does not meet the criteria of the hologram definition.

So what is it?

~~~
stuntkite
When you really get into spatial imaging, splitting hairs on definition is
really important. To the layman, it's basically what you think of as a
hologram. Holography is a photographic record of a light field. Leia might be
more accurately described as a spatialized parallax display. With a light
field you would be able to infinitely change your depth focus to any item in
the volume because the entire light field is captured.

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radarsat1
This is really clever, from a design perspective. I mean, projecting onto a
moving particle is a really innovative idea. But scientifically, what I find
the most surprising, is that a laser trap can move a particle around at
sufficient speeds, outside a vacuum, without losing it. Impressive! I had no
idea that was possible. Anyone know what speed or frequency of movement it can
achieve?

~~~
aw3c2
Judging from my experience with other well-polished PR pieces from
universities, I would expect only the "oscillating above the finger tips"
parts to be real time. The more advanced examples were only shown statically
and thus were probably like long-shutter images.

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andars
I've seen this in operation and am acquainted with the researchers. I may be
able to attempt to answer some questions about it.

~~~
iliis
Awesome achievement! This really looks like a viable way of true floating
3D-images.

Can you levitate multiple particles at the same time? How fast are they
moving? How sensitivie is it to disturbances in the air?

~~~
andars
> Can you levitate multiple particles at the same time?

Yes, but their device currently is only capable of levitating a single
particle. With the current approach, the device would need one laser for
confining each particle. The lasers used for RGB could potentially be
multiplexed between particles, but this is less likely to work for the
confinement due to the instability of the trap.

> How fast are they moving?

Pretty slow. All the "big" images (Leia, grad student, etc) are long-exposure.
You can see the particle moving in real-time at about 0:50. In the videos, you
can see the device can almost do real-time persistence of vision for volumes
substantially smaller than a fingertip.

> How sensitive is it to disturbances in the air?

As I mentioned above, the confinement is weak and the trap is pretty unstable.
Its possible that they have improved the longevity of the trap in the last few
months, but when doing long-exposure the device is surrounded by a heavy cloth
barrier to block both external light and air movement.

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foxfired
For now, they created a single pixel by trapping one particle (not sure what
it's made of) and beaming different colors on it.

Depending on when they managed to trap two particles, we can start applying
Moore's law and double it every so often.

~~~
shawnz
It sounds to me like they move the particle around and use persistence of
vision to make an image.

~~~
valine
Kind of like CTR displays but in 3D.

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earenndil
> Humans cannot discern images at rates faster than 10 per second

If the PCMR folks already hate everyone saying the human eye sees at 25FPS,
imagine how they'd react to that!

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gpm
I have to admit my first reaction to that was "and yet 60fps is apparently too
slow for VR".

But I think they might have been talking about how long the trail would
persist for in our vision, making it appear as one object when it goes in
circles. Not how quickly you can flash images in front of us before we won't
be able to see them. I'm not sure if it's true in that case.

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Mithaldu
VR is not about image perception, but image reaction. The important part is
how long it takes from you providing input to the input reaction being
perceived by you. The latency between that. And given a sufficiently huge
sample size (interacting with VR is many minutes of nothing but samples) a
human can very easily discern this latency.

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DoofusOfDeath
I find it interesting that people with such a large variety of world views
(Mormons, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, atheists, etc.) can all produce
groundbreaking advances in science, math, and engineering.

Pick any two of those aforementioned groups, and you'll find plenty of members
from one who consider the other's members to have unfathomably bad reasoning
and common-sense skills. And yet, somehow, some members of all those groups
bear wonderful intellectual fruit.

~~~
pasta
Maybe because most questions about life are 'why?' questions and not 'how?'
questions.

~~~
brownbat
Minus, say, "how did we get here" or "how should we behave?"

Or another way to look at it, we could reduce almost all questions, in science
or religion, to something like "what is the nature of this stuff around me?"

A subpart, "how can I interact with the stuff?" A subpart of that question, in
turn, is "what are the consequences of those interactions?"

Sometimes the stuff around you is carbon. You can burn it or build things with
it. If you breathe enough of it in certain forms, you might suffocate.

Sometimes the stuff around you is other people. You can help them or hurt them
in a near endless variety of ways. The consequences are complex but it's
generally better to not be a dick, for a variety of reasons.

Maybe the stuff around you is... all of reality? Which may or may not be
controlled by a unimaginably powerful law giver. Maybe not, but if so, that
would certainly affect the consequences of a lot of actions, so it would be
worth trying to work out how that system worked if that was the deal.

To be clear, I'm not arguing for Pascal's wager here, I'm just needling the
idea of non overlapping magisteria.

Isn't it all just, "How does reality work?"

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Cogito
I hadn't heard of non overlapping magisteria (NOMA) before.

My immediate thought was that if you assume the 'teaching domains' of science
and religion do not overlap at all, then the domain of religion is vanishingly
small.

If you accept that science covers (at least) all observable things, and also
hold the idea of NOMA, then religion must never deal with anything observable.
The teaching domain of the unobservable seems like it would be near non-
existent.

Alternately, let's start from the position that a supernatural power exists
and cares about what we do. Why would we be interested in that? We would be
interested if that supernatural power has the ability to affect our lives/the
world we live in, or will affect our lives after we die/some other aspect of
some supernatural world beyond this one.

If the power can affect this world, we should be able to observe that
interaction. If it is literally impossible to measure any effect, it is the
same as if the power is not interacting with the world at all. Which is to
say, if the power interacts with the world, then those interactions fall under
the domain of science.

If the power does not interact with the world, then we can only be interested
in what effect our actions, choices, and beliefs will have outside this world,
on the supernatural or afterlife. The thing is, we have no way of knowing what
that would be, because communicating any of that information to us would count
as interacting with the world.

Thus, anyone claiming that something should or shouldn't be believed or done,
for religious reasons, is either making a testable claim or claiming something
which has no reason to be believed.

If the magesteria of science and religion truly are non overlapping, it seems
that religion's must necessarily be very very small.

------
icelancer
HN title: "Holograms are here"

Actual title: "Better than a hologram: BYU study produces 3D images that float
in 'thin air'"

Article text: "First things, first, Smalley says. The image of Princess Leia
is not what people think it is: It’s not a hologram."

Can we not editorialize and/or get the titles completely wrong?

~~~
snr
It's actually a hologram - which is by definition a 3D image. I contend that
my original title is appropriate. Holograms ARE volumetric displays. I can see
why the researcher wouldn't want to call it that - claim you invented
something better than science fiction = instant media coverage.

hol·o·gram noun A three-dimensional image formed by the interference of light
beams from a laser or other coherent light source.

~~~
maho
As indicated by your definition, the 3d-effect of a hologram arises from
_interference_ of a coherent light source. In the display that is shown in the
video, the 3d-effect arises from light-emission (scattering) of a point source
that moves around. The light from the point source need not be coherent for
this display to work! Therefore, the term "hologram" seems inappropriate.

I have never seen a hologram that is also a volumetric display. To me, this
would be the holy grail of hologramming, since you could use interference for
occlusion effects.

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rprenger
Kind of funny title given that the speaker says several times in video that
it's NOT a hologram

~~~
andars
Nonetheless, everybody calls the displays in Star Wars "holograms". Smalley
notes this, and the title is using the word in this colloquial sense. There is
an unfortunate disconnect between the technical and colloquial meanings of
"hologram".

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DrScump
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16225854](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16225854)

47+ points

Actual title of _this_ submit was "Better than a hologram: BYU study produces
3D images that float in 'thin air'"

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didgeoridoo
"The future won't be the future without a Princess Leia projector".

Love.

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debt
Great _another_ medium from which failed reality stars can convince an
increasingly stupid public to vote for.

Edit: This is funny, no one was a sense of humor. Just imagine Donald Trump's
holographic head spinning slowly while he gives the state of the union. That's
the future.

~~~
dang
Please don't post unsubstantive comments or add political flamebait into HN
threads.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

Edit: you've posted a ton of unsubstantive comments and we've asked you before
to stop, so would you please stop? We're hoping for higher discussion quality
here.

~~~
debt
I guess I could've framed it differently, but I think it's pretty high quality
stuff idk.

