Fairy Lights in Femtoseconds

http://digitalnature.slis.tsukuba.ac.jp/2015/06/fairy-lights-in-femtoseconds/

by alternize • 11 years ago

118 13 11 years ago

digitalnature.slis.tsukuba.ac.jp

ljk• 11 years ago

looks like it's down now

Natsu• 11 years ago

Here's the YouTube link with the demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=63&v=AoWi10YVmfE

Someday we may have the displays we see in the movies at this rate.

trhway• 11 years ago

beside the images functionality, i wonder whether it can be used to precisely "herd" say a cloud of deuterium ions to get something like microfusion

amelius• 11 years ago

This is nice. But at the same time, I wonder why we still cannot make light-field displays, i.e., displays where not only the emission of light is controlled, but also the direction. This seems like a more generic approach to the problem.

theatgrex• 11 years ago

Maybe you should figure out how to do that :)

beambot• 11 years ago

Raskar's group at MIT (and others) have made light field displays. They're expensive. Abstract:

For about a century, researchers and experimentalists have strived to bring glasses-free 3D experiences to the big screen. Much progress has been made and light field projection systems are now commercially available. Unfortunately, available display systems usually employ dozens of devices making such setups costly, energy inefficient, and bulky. We present a compressive approach to light field synthesis with projection devices. For this purpose, we propose a novel, passive screen design that is inspired by angle-expanding Keplerian telescopes. Combined with high-speed light field projection and nonnegative light field factorization, we demonstrate that compressive light field projection is possible with a single device. We build a prototype light field projector and angle-expanding screen from scratch, evaluate the system in simulation, present a variety of results, and demonstrate that the projector can alternatively achieve super-resolved and high dynamic range 2D image display when used with a conventional screen.

http://web.media.mit.edu/~gordonw/CompressiveLightFieldProje...

ori_b• 11 years ago

They're expensive.

I'm pretty sure that femtosecond lasers aren't cheap either.

pierrec• 11 years ago

The second technique that they present here is the generation of true holograms (we have to use "true" nowadays, with all the products falsely marketed as holograms on the market). This technique is equivalent, or arguably superior to controlling the direction of emitted light as in a light field display. It seems they do this by projecting the interference pattern on a flat surface.

The wavefront generated by a true hologram contains not only arbitrary directional information, but also complete "positional" data, ie. changing with distance from the screen. The main thing that's prevented us from making true holographic screens is the massive resolution that they require (relative to displayed wavelengths), and it seems that the resolution they've achieved here is enough to create simple low-resolution holograms, though I don't see anything preventing the exact same technology from creating larger, more detailed holograms.

personjerry• 11 years ago

Holy crap this is cool. Ironman-style computer UI incoming!!!

gabeio• 11 years ago

What I would do to have a projector with that resolution. Sigh, I don't even want to remotely know the price tag on that. But it's also the absolutely coolest thing I have seen in plasma tech/research recently.

titanomachy• 11 years ago

I wonder what is meant by "tangible interaction". If you touch the fairy you get burnt by the laser?

jonmrodriguez• 11 years ago

An example of "tangible interaction" is pressing this checkbox in this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=100&v=AoWi10YVmfE

In terms of what the projection feels like, this article explains that to some people the laser feels like sandpaper, and to some people it feels like a static shock:

http://www.popsci.com/secret-interactive-holograms-plasma-an...

Fairy Lights in Femtoseconds

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