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From: eugene@nas.nasa.gov (Eugene N. Miya)
Newsgroups: comp.graphics
Subject: Re: Digital Holography
Message-ID: <1991May10.235611.18365@nas.nasa.gov>
Date: 10 May 91 23:56:11 GMT
References: <1019.282B28FD@nwark.fidonet.org>
Sender: news@nas.nasa.gov
Reply-To: eugene@amelia.nas.nasa.gov (Eugene N. Miya)
Organization: NASA-Ames Research Center
Lines: 41

In article <1991May9.153446.21742@leland.Stanford.EDU>
rick@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Rick Ottolini) writes:
>IMHO digital holography will be THE 3-D graphics technique of the future.
>Current rendering techniques SIMULATE 3-D through the using of lighting
>models, shape [perspective, stereo], and motion [fly-thru animation,
>virtual reality animation].  Holography seeks to compute actual light waves
>themselves.  
>I envision "Princess Lea" displays, floating images like that
>of the help message in Star Wars I.  This avoids the sensory sheaths the
>VR people are using.

I just happened to glance this.  Two points.

1) I am a little bit disturbed by the special effects Star Wars image.
2) I don't think it will be "THE" but it will certainly be a powerful
technique.  I think part of the effectiveness is dependent upon the
audience (who pays the bucks and what their background expectations are).

This film (SW) seems to be THE image of what we think holography might be.
I hope not.  We have some fundamental human limitations with our
eye balls.  Retinas are flat.  We need to look (no pun intended) at
what we want in 3-D (and 4-D).  Things like depth cues, superposition
information, etc.  But it fundamentally does not get rid of problems
like hidden objects.  You can't see what's behind Leah, she obscures it.
That's not good.  You won't be able to see behind that 3-D rendering of
an oil reservoir without doing something else (head parallax, time
varying (or not) cross-sections, etc.)  This costs is computation time,
storage, etc.

I still think we will need ball-and stick models, computer generated CAD-type
3-D sculpture outputs, sounds, etc.  But, holography might be helped if
optical benches, and analogy and digital optical computer were cheaper
and available.  Computing one pixel or voxel at a time is inefficient.

I do think its neat, we should fund it, and we should have lots of people
playing with holograms.  Hell, I have holograms sitting on my desk.
I just don't think it will be the end-all of computer graphics.

--eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eugene@orville.nas.nasa.gov
  Resident Cynic, Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers
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