
Holographic Displays Coming to Smartphones - shill
http://spectrum.ieee.org/consumer-electronics/audiovideo/holographic-displays-coming-to-smartphones
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ctdonath
_“Everybody wants to put 3-D on a smartphone”_

Question is whether people will want to _use_ 3-D on a smartphone. We may be
hitting a saturation point where current generation(s) have absorbed enough
change, and we may have to wait for the next generation, growing up with "a
Cray 2 in your pocket" to be ready for the next big step.

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anigbrowl
They will. It's one of those things that people don't know they want until
they have it. Nobody is asking for it, but the minute they see it in the real
world they will pull out their wallets so fast it will tear their pockets
open.

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jotm
Like HD audio phone calls? The ones lucky to try it complain that the sound
"is too clear" or that it "sounds weird" :-)

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Domenic_S
I'd settle for speakerphones and conference bridges that sound good.

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vram22
I'd settle for reliable, fast, cheap Internet everywhere :)

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dm2
Video on this page: [http://spectrum.ieee.org/consumer-
electronics/audiovideo/gla...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/consumer-
electronics/audiovideo/glassesfree-3d-from-almost-any-angle)

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agumonkey
direct mp4
[http://spectrum.ieee.org/ns/video/nature11972_sv1.mp4](http://spectrum.ieee.org/ns/video/nature11972_sv1.mp4)
[http://spectrum.ieee.org/ns/video/large_prints.mp4](http://spectrum.ieee.org/ns/video/large_prints.mp4)

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coldcode
Why? The screens are too small and the resolution is likely to be poor; plus
you can only interact with a finger on a 2D surface. 3D in space gestures in
such a small area are way too inexact and subject to false recognition.

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anigbrowl
People hunger for novelty.

The first application you will see is Ringers; when someone calls you, a
little glowing globe (or dice, or butterfly, or...) appears in the air above
your phone and you wave your hand to answer. There will be a bunch of
3d0animation 'visual ringtones' sold to this end.

People will get in the habit of laying their phone on a table as a display
just to show this off - yes, this means there will be a minor epidemic of
phone theft, more stories about thieves being trapped by the very phones they
stole, all of which create favorable publicity for new technology by
positioning it as something highly desirable and therefore worthy of theft.

Smartphones with holographic displays will have small tiwn (or quad) cameras
mounted at the corners with face-detection software. This will generate a
partial stereo image of your face as you look down at the hologram, which will
in turn be a partial stereo image of the caller's face looking back at you but
floating above the screen. Is this directly _useful_? Not so much. Will it be
annoying to other people in the vicinity, like bluetooth headsets on people
who appear to be talking to themselves, or some people's strange habit of
holding their phone up to their mouth like a slice of pizza, while their
conversation partner buzzes loudly through the speaker? Damn right, and the
curmudgeonly articles write themselves (I'm angry at these people already -
aren't you?).

But will it at the same time be awesomely cool to be able to hold
conversations with little hologram head-and-shoulders people, as long as you
do it discreetly? Oh yes it will. Businesses will pay $$$ for larger models
that can project life-size head and shoulders for telepresence meetings,
because that will feel about 100x more meaningful than talking to people on a
video wall.

What else can you do besides talk to people and get voicemail from kidnapped
princesses? Well, there are games, where there's a whole universe of
possibility even on the crappy bounded confines of model 1.0 cellphones.
Successful games and toys do not have to be complicated or even clever, in
fact for new technology it's better if they're stupid simple to drive adoption
as widely as possible. Obvious candidate: a little holographic Rock'em Sock'em
robot fight, where you struggle with your phone or a friend by wiggling your
finger tip in the vicinity of your robot until one of you 'wins'. Is this
stupid? Yeah. so is the original toy, and that still sells for $20. Along the
same lines, holographic origami sumo wrestlers who respond to your fingertip
tapping on the table next to your phone.

I could go on and on, and I haven't even brought up ipad-size tablets yet.
Send money for more futurism ;-)

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mortenjorck
It would appear that you are under the impression that this is some sort of
Star Wars-esque 3D _volumetric projector_.

There's nothing floating in the air. No one knows how to do that yet. This is
just a more advanced version of the lenticular display on the Nintendo 3DS.

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anigbrowl
I think this is sufficient as long as it's convincing to people in the
immediate vicinity, they don't need to be able to see it across the room. But
you're right, I let my imagination run away with me on the videoconferencing
example.

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pronoiac
I might be nitpicking, but it seems worn to call this holographic. It _is_ 3d,
but it's like an improved lenticular process; it has _many_ views, but they're
discrete not continuous, and they don't float above the display.

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jessriedel
The difference between discrete and continuous for 3D is the same as for 2D.
Traditional holograms are just like analog images with photographic film. Yes
they're both continuous, but they both have serious problems with usability.
Discrete techniques, like lenticular displays and LCD screens, are much more
robust and become effectively continuous when the resolution gets high enough
(retina displays).

Calling this a hologram is as semantically accurate as calling a digital movie
a "film".

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pyre
I think that when most people hear hologram, they think something reminiscent
of Star Wars. These are not 3D volumetric projectors, so I would say that from
the layman's point-of-view this is not a hologram.

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phkahler
I believe the correct solution is to have coherent light emitted from very
small pixels, with the ability to modulate either the phase or amplitude of
each pixel. This will give the appearance of a regular film hologram. Color is
of course another challenge, but this approach seems more practical than tiny
lenses producing a finite number of directions. OTOH the old CRT shadow mask
was a marvel in its day and was quite practical.

Ultimately we DO want glasses. A single holograpic display per eye would be
fine and would allow looking around by moving your eyeballs instead of your
head in a VR context. This could be a couple of square inches (or less) of
hologram per eye.

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mortenjorck
This is undoubtedly cool technology, but before anyone gets _too_ excited
about holograms floating in space, understand that this is not some sort of
breakthrough into the volumetric 3D displays you see in sci-fi movies: You
still have to be looking directly into the screen to see the image, just like
how a traditional hologram can't escape the boundaries of its frame.

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josephpmay
Lightfield displays in glasses will be revolutionary for augmented reality,
but I don't see the resolution or computation problems being solved anytime
soon. I'll have to research Ostendo and Leia, however.

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jotm
This technology will be DOA if AR glasses take off at the same time - the
latter could be used as displays for any device, not only the smartphone in
your pocket.

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ericcumbee
Well that will make my habit of saying "Computer...arch" seem a little less
odd.

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wehadfun
instead of this they should get the projector phones working where you can
project a 50inch movie screen from your phone.

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vlunkr
Wow that would be really useful!

