That’s it for the 3D series. The following articles were released under the 3D Series besides this one.

• 3D Sound
• 3D TV
• 3D Printing
• 3D Holograms
• 3D Games
• Figureprints
• Nintendo 3DS Release
• Fun Technology
• 3D is Coming

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.

If 3D printing in reality is too much check out this 3D printer which operates in-game using a horrible amount of redstone circuitry, pistons and other tricks.  Certifiably insane but ingenious at the same time.  He’s from New Zealand and there was wool involved but I’m not one to spread rumours…  This particular version prints an 8x8x12 block.  Each 8×8 slice has to be loaded so it’s a bit of work but the results speak for themselves.

Cody Sumter and Jason Boggess are running a project by in the MIT Media Lab called Minecraft.Print(). As the name suggests it’s all about printing out parts of your Minecraft world via 3D printing. They sum it up in 3 steps.

1. Play it – Make cool stuff in Minecraft
2. Prep it – To avoid printing the entire world, you specify the region by placing a combination of specific blocks (obsidian, diamond, gold, iron) at two points to define the 3D area to print.
3. Print it

Minecraft.Print() outputs a standard model file ready for 3D printing.

They printed a portal companion cube and the Enterprise but there’s endless possibilities here. The video explains it well;

h/t: Gamepron

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.