At 65 Inches and 8K, This May Be the World’s Largest 3D Immersive Display
Perhaps the biggest news in the world of immersive imaging in recent months is the impressively large holographic display announced by IDEA member company Looking Glass Factory. The Looking Glass 65” is the largest, highest-resolution display of its type ever commercially introduced, at 65 inches with 8K resolution. To put it into perspective, the display is five times larger than typical 3D displays, and 50 times larger than other group-viewable 3D display currently available on the market.
At this size, the display is intended for viewing by as many as 50 people at once. Generation of up to 100 different perspectives of 3D content from 100 million points of light every 60th of a second means everything shown on the Looking Glass 65” feels perceptually real.
Prototypes of this new display are already in use by entertainment companies for both storytelling and marketing. For instance, Springbok Entertainment recently premiered its new film, “Zanzibar: Trouble in Paradise,” on the 65-inch display at Tribeca 2022. This groundbreaking production is not only the first holographic film or documentary on a Looking Glass display but also the first-ever holographic film or documentary in competition at the Tribeca Festival.
IDEA Members Selected to Showcase New Technology at Cable-Tec EXPO 22
Several active members from the IDEA team will be showcasing their recent work on 3D Streaming at the SCTE Cable-Tec Expo Fall Technical Forum to be held this September in Philadelphia.
Austin Pahl, software engineer at CableLabs, will give an in-depth presentation on motivations and algorithms behind 3D Streaming. In addition to attending the presentation, expo registrants will have access to a more detailed technical paper on the same subject.
Recognizing the steady rise of diverse forms of immersive media, IDEA has designed a novel architecture, dubbed “3D Streaming,” for delivering immersive content to end displays with a simple, uniform methodology regardless of the display type. With the ongoing growth of immersive media, particularly augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and light field displays, and the rapidly increasing data throughput requirements needed by these devices, IDEA believes it is more important than ever to build an architecture that streamlines distribution workflows.
In May, IDEA conducted a live demonstration of the latest advance in 3D streaming, showing a greatly advanced architecture and pipeline developed by engineers from IDEA members Charter Communications, OTOY, and CableLabs.
In the demo, hundreds of 3D objects were streamed in a complete 3D scene, creating a seamless 3D experience for the viewer. Now, the viewer will be able to watch and interact with longer-form 3D content on multiple immersive displays.
Both Unreal and Unity game engines were employed as clients. This is significant since over 90% of developers and content providers for immersive displays are using these game engines to create content, making this is a major step toward bringing 3D streaming to a wider audience.
For a more detailed description of the demo and its significance, see the article in the last issue of this newsletter.
Is it just me, or does it seem like news about holograms, metaverses, 3D immersion, and the like is just everywhere? From medical breakthroughs to education, politics, sports, and even the art world, things happened in the past few months that pushed the use of technology a bit further. Truly exciting times.
Here’s a quick rundown of some of the stories out there…
