Forgot your password?
Cyhist Mar 11 1997 A
Document Actions
Date: Tue, 11 Mar 1997 09:14:04 -0500
Reply-To: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> Sender: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> From: T E Clifton <tclifton@DC.ISX.COM>
Subject: "True" 3-D display devices.....
X-To: CYHIST@SJUVM.STJOHNS.EDU
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
______________________________________________________________________
Community Memory: Discussion List on the History of Cyberspace ______________________________________________________________________
>Ben Tanen wrote:
>>Hi folks. I am interested in the earliest mention anyone can find of a three-dimensional display: anything involving an image-producing device for each eye with some way of making them combine using parallax, polarized light, etc. would do.
Bob Bickford replied:
>This is not a "3-D display". What you've described is a *stereoscopic* display system. There is a _huge_ difference. A true 3-D display would have the characteristic that you could move your head and/or walk around it to see more information.... A true 3-D display system would probably involve some kind of solid hologram, and as far as I'm aware nobody has yet built one.
>
Actually, there's been a couple of displays built that satisfy Bob's definition. Back in the early '90s (OK, so that wasn't *THAT* long ago), I ran a modest program at the Joint National Intelligence Development Staff (JNIDS) which investigated/funded "Direct Volumetric Display Devices", which we defined as those displays which attempted to generate images in a volume, viewable from multiple angles, with image resolution sacrificed in favor of spatial resolution. The driver for this was intelligence analytical tasks where relative orientation in space was important. Two example datasets we used were air tactics analysis (looking at collections of aircraft maneuvering for advantage in a volume of airspace) and orbitology analysis (understanding the orbital mechanics of satellites). Fred Wefer/MITRE and I wrote a paper in 1993 on this subject ("Direct Volumetric Display Devices", Computer Graphics and Applications Vol. 13, No. 4, pp57-65, July '93). A short list of some of the displays:
- Larry Sher's work at BBN in Cambridge, on the "SpaceGraph" varifocal mirror display - Used a CRT to create successive 2-D slices of a volume, and reflected these slices off of a synchronized vibrating mirror (varying the focus point in synchronization with the CRT scan rate) to create a volumetric display of the 3D data set. Within a limited angle of view (roughly 60 degrees), you could "walk around", "move your head", etc. and see more/different information. Larry's display made up for the angle of view restrictions by having the best image resolution of the bunch.
- Don William's work at Texas Instruments, on the "OmniView" spinning screen - Don spun a two dimensional screen around an axis at 600+RPM, and used lasers to illuminate points on the screen as it swept out a three dimensional volume. This resulted in shapes floating in a wash-tub-size space, which could be viewed from all angles. The early versions of this had a "voxel budget" of around 4000 dots in the volume. We plugged a number of data sets into this display, including some range data from an Air Force exercise at the Nellis AFB test range (various air craft flying through a volume over the Nevada desert), various CAD/CAM models, and a truly unusual Soviet-era satellite constellation animation (the Molniya comm birds).
- Dennis Solomon, Volumetric Imaging Inc., Cambridge MA, was working a variation of the spinning screen, except rather than illuminating a passive screen with a laser, he rotated an active screen composed of LEDs
- Parviz Soltan, at the Naval Research and Development facility in San Diego, was working on a system essentially identical to the Texas Instruments display.
- Another group, LAMDA Systems in Chicago, were working a variation on the rotating screen theme. Don't remember what made them different.
- Some folks on Madison Ave in NYC were trying to create a computer generated version of the "floating penny" tabletop curiosity, using parabolic mirrors to cast an image into space. This approach had the best image resolution of the bunch, and the worst spatial resolution.
regards
T
______________________________________________________________________
Reply-To: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> Sender: "CYHIST Community Memory: Discussion list on the History of
Cyberspace" <CYHIST@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> From: T E Clifton <tclifton@DC.ISX.COM>
Subject: "True" 3-D display devices.....
X-To: CYHIST@SJUVM.STJOHNS.EDU
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
______________________________________________________________________
Community Memory: Discussion List on the History of Cyberspace ______________________________________________________________________
>Ben Tanen wrote:
>>Hi folks. I am interested in the earliest mention anyone can find of a three-dimensional display: anything involving an image-producing device for each eye with some way of making them combine using parallax, polarized light, etc. would do.
Bob Bickford replied:
>This is not a "3-D display". What you've described is a *stereoscopic* display system. There is a _huge_ difference. A true 3-D display would have the characteristic that you could move your head and/or walk around it to see more information.... A true 3-D display system would probably involve some kind of solid hologram, and as far as I'm aware nobody has yet built one.
>
Actually, there's been a couple of displays built that satisfy Bob's definition. Back in the early '90s (OK, so that wasn't *THAT* long ago), I ran a modest program at the Joint National Intelligence Development Staff (JNIDS) which investigated/funded "Direct Volumetric Display Devices", which we defined as those displays which attempted to generate images in a volume, viewable from multiple angles, with image resolution sacrificed in favor of spatial resolution. The driver for this was intelligence analytical tasks where relative orientation in space was important. Two example datasets we used were air tactics analysis (looking at collections of aircraft maneuvering for advantage in a volume of airspace) and orbitology analysis (understanding the orbital mechanics of satellites). Fred Wefer/MITRE and I wrote a paper in 1993 on this subject ("Direct Volumetric Display Devices", Computer Graphics and Applications Vol. 13, No. 4, pp57-65, July '93). A short list of some of the displays:
- Larry Sher's work at BBN in Cambridge, on the "SpaceGraph" varifocal mirror display - Used a CRT to create successive 2-D slices of a volume, and reflected these slices off of a synchronized vibrating mirror (varying the focus point in synchronization with the CRT scan rate) to create a volumetric display of the 3D data set. Within a limited angle of view (roughly 60 degrees), you could "walk around", "move your head", etc. and see more/different information. Larry's display made up for the angle of view restrictions by having the best image resolution of the bunch.
- Don William's work at Texas Instruments, on the "OmniView" spinning screen - Don spun a two dimensional screen around an axis at 600+RPM, and used lasers to illuminate points on the screen as it swept out a three dimensional volume. This resulted in shapes floating in a wash-tub-size space, which could be viewed from all angles. The early versions of this had a "voxel budget" of around 4000 dots in the volume. We plugged a number of data sets into this display, including some range data from an Air Force exercise at the Nellis AFB test range (various air craft flying through a volume over the Nevada desert), various CAD/CAM models, and a truly unusual Soviet-era satellite constellation animation (the Molniya comm birds).
- Dennis Solomon, Volumetric Imaging Inc., Cambridge MA, was working a variation of the spinning screen, except rather than illuminating a passive screen with a laser, he rotated an active screen composed of LEDs
- Parviz Soltan, at the Naval Research and Development facility in San Diego, was working on a system essentially identical to the Texas Instruments display.
- Another group, LAMDA Systems in Chicago, were working a variation on the rotating screen theme. Don't remember what made them different.
- Some folks on Madison Ave in NYC were trying to create a computer generated version of the "floating penny" tabletop curiosity, using parabolic mirrors to cast an image into space. This approach had the best image resolution of the bunch, and the worst spatial resolution.
regards
T
______________________________________________________________________
