Holoxica Announces Animated 3D Holographic Display With Images That 'Hang' In Mid Air
Already renowned for its award-winning 3D digital holograms for scientific, medical and engineering visualisation, the latest holographic development by Edinburgh-based Holoxica Ltd is up in the air – literally!
Holoxica's latest 3D visualisation is an innovative and dynamic 3D holographic display where images are suspended in mid-air – no need for glasses, nor does it involve any strange optical tricks that could you headaches!
For the last three years, Holoxica have been working in collaboration with the University of Edinburgh and Heriot Watt University to develop the technology into more than a simple prototype, but a product that is ready to be commercialised.
This new display from Holoxica interweaves a fixed number of different holograms onto the holographic screen. Any of the pre-configured images can be selected in any order to make "flip motion" 3D animation giving the impression of true motion. The resulting 3D image is ‘suspended' in mid-air and can change in real time.
Javid Khan, managing director of Holoxica Limited commented;
"The ‘mid air suspension' holographic screen currently embeds up to nine images but this number can be scaled up.
"Indeed, we can scale up towards 25 images, where it is possible to get a second of full-3D video or make other kinds of animated characters. Although, colour is limited at the moment, the plan is to extend this in the future to give full colour images by combining red, green and blue light sources.
The creation of ‘true' holographic displays has largely been driven by science fiction but this has proven to be a very difficult technical challenge for researchers when they are faced with the realities of science ‘fact'."
Holoxica has taken a simplified ‘bottom-up' approach rather than the traditional complicated top-down one taken by the research community.
The key is in the simplification of the creation process. Javid Khan and his team start by making a simple two-image holographic display and works upwards from there. Holoxica's holographic screen is about the size of a page and the images are the size of a hand.
The results have been impressive. Holoxica images are bigger, brighter, bolder and visible under ambient laboratory lighting conditions. The next stage of development will be to integrate the display into a system that can be taken beyond the laboratory and into products.
The current economic climate is tough on high tech start-ups like Holoxica and who is seeking further investment to make the display better, smaller, cheaper and faster.
Javid Khan continues;
"The use of 3D is picking up again and is all around us. The demand for real 3D is growing and holographic technology is the only proper way to do 3D. Everything else is just a pale imitation.
We are possible at the same stage as LCDs were in the eighties when they were and still are used in everyday items like calculators and wristwatches. LCDs and other display technologies have come a long way from those humble beginnings and we have a lot of expectations to fulfil."
SOURCE: Holoxica