What I have attempted to show is the incredible breadth of 3D technology and that the current push for 3D is reinforced by the different demand areas. For example, in games, TV and games and so this time 3D technology is likely to move past the gimmick nature of the past and as it becomes integral and useful to the overall entertainment experience we will see more and more quality 3D entertainment and 3D becomes accepted as the norm.
One of the interesting things about 3D technology is its role in the change in focus from taking ourselves to places and experiences, to taking places and experiences to ourselves.
What I mean by this is traditionally we used to go to the movies, or go to our holidays or our workplace, or to the shops and so on. What I see for the future, which is already beginning, is all these places coming to us instead. In a way that could mean the old sci-fi dream of teleporting might be irrelevant in reality.
Holography allows the light scattered from an object to be recorded and then reconstructed so that when an imaging system (a camera or an eye) is placed in the reconstructed beam, an image of the object will be seen even though the object is no longer present. The image changes as the position and orientation of the viewing system changes in exactly the same way as if the object were still present, thus making the image appear three-dimensional. The holographic recording itself is not an image – it consists of an apparently random structure of either varying intensity, density or profile.
Holography was invented in 1947 by the physicist Dennis Gabor. He received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1971 for this technology.
The most common type of hologram experienced by people today is on a credit card or various other item identification protection systems. It’s often symbolic of official but not really that attractive even though it does indeed give the 3D effect.
Full volumetric 3D holography was first recorded in 1962. Cheap solid-state lasers, such as those found in millions of DVD recorders have helped make holography much more accessible to low-budget researchers, artists and dedicated hobbyists.
One of the more interesting examples of holography I discovered was via a friend who works in management. Instead of spending wads of time and cash flying over for meetings they use this room described in the video below which allows direct realistic communication in a boardroom style. According to him the experience was very good and vaguely ghost-like.
Holography can let us go beyond being locked inside a TV to have 3D in real space. There’s more to it though as the immersion of the system is being worked on to involve more than just images such as the following “touchable holography” work involving hand tracking and ultrasonic sensual feedback.
With the coming 3D wave, brilliant minds have been busy perfecting the technology. This amazing development involved doing away with the glasses for a more ..uh.. natural experience.
3D is being improved upon in real life too by carefully editing inconvenient gravitational constants.
The last one in this link is a strong lesson on the problem of 3D glasses headaches and is apparently real unlike the others. It seems to work by allowing only one half of the 3D image through the glasses for 3D movies relying on polarisation technology, which is common in cinemas.
One of the reasons I’m fascinated by 3D games is my early exposure to it. Along with that is a degree of wariness about the hype and gimmick nature that 3D gaming can be.
Early 3D gaming started in the 80s. I remember playing a very basic binocular style 3D shooter which seemed to be based on LEDs used in a similar style to the LCD handheld games popular in the day. I wish I could remember what the device was called and more importantly where it went after all these years. It was not a Vectorex. It was my first 3D game and inspired me to create very simple anaglyph stereoscopic images on my Amiga 500, which I viewed with an old glasses frame replaced with coloured cellophane I pinched from somewhere. I hoped for the day where 3D was better than my poorly drawn volumetric shapes.
For a long time printing has been at a plateau. Thanks to laser and ink-jet technologies we have had sharp, high quality prints which we can print almost anywhere on many types of material for relatively low cost. We have colour so rich you can almost touch it. Pages spew out almost as fast as you can gather them. Indeed printers themselves are very cheap as the money is made via the ink and toners. Even ink is cheaper now with many unbranded options such as refill kits which work well for many users.
There things have languished for years. But there is a resurgence. One more frontier to cross. Namely that extra dimension from 2D to 3D.
Yes printing sheets of fine, literally paper thin, text and colour is soooo 2010. Now we have reached the capability of giving it a bit of substance in that third dimension and so make solid objects. This technology has gone from being pretty much a gimmick back in 2003 to what is now a young, but professional, market.
Solid objects can be of many materials especially plastics, both rigid and flexible, but also including metals and other materials. Printing is often monochrome but colour printing can be done too.
The process commonly used is fairly simple;
First one needs a digitised 3D model of the object to be printed. This may be via computer modelling or alternatively a 3D scan might be made of a real object already in existence.
Then comes the printing process. Basically thin layers of the 3D objects are printed as successive layers on top of each other, building up the object layer by 2D layer. Often the material and substrate to support the object is a powder and the actual printing is done by laser heat or a liquid fusing the powder together where the object is. However, there are several other methods. All of them have their good points and issues and so the best ones will shine through as the industry ages.
Finally they have post processing such as cleaning up the object and perhaps finishing it with lacquer or electroplating to improve properties of the material or appearance.
If you look around you can find applications already including design prototypes, difficult and unique mechanical parts, art, shoes soles and medicine.
At the moment 3D printing is in its infancy. Each Layer of the multi-layered object is printed rapidly but the entire 3D object can take several hours to print, depending on the size.
The precision is already acceptably high for most applications at around 0.1mm for most standard printing but can probably be pushed further in time.
Costs for these printers are very high, the most basic units seems to be in the tens of thousands of dollars. The actual material costs are not really that severe, especially since the unused substrate is often recycled.
Materials are also quite good so far but may also have a little way to go. Many of the 3D printed objects are fully functional. Print out a belt buckle and it works, for example. Even ball bearings and skateboards have been shown to work. One of the more fascinating developments is the possibility for bio-printing or flat out organ printing. Where living tissue like a liver might be printed into shape and popped in to replace your dysfunctional one.
As a young industry there is so much untapped potential. Any 3D modeller might become a sculptor or object developer and the ideas thrown around suggest a lot of things are coming which are not foreseen. One enterprising open (as in open source) idea is the RepRap project, short for “replicating rapid prototyper”. In other words they aim to make a self replicating 3D printer!
Normal 3D plastic objects we already see and use everyday require an expensive process of mould development and preparation followed by relatively rapid and cheap reproductions using injection technology. This lends itself greatly to economics of scale. 3D printing totally breaks that economy of scale mould. The expense here is the printer instead and one part is going to cost much the same as another to produce.
Expect to see a lot more about this technology in the future. What follows is a relatively good video showing some of the extra steps in 3D printing of a ball bearing, in this case.
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