Does holographic animation exist yet? The answer depends on how you define it... there are some products being called "holographic television" now, but in my view the answer is "not yet."

Seems to me that true holographic animation would have three-dimensional image, produced with holographic technology, with reasonable clarity that can be viewed from different angles by changing location of viewer. Need not be in "mid-air" or "interactive" with respect to touch -- although that could come with time. Three-dimensional graphics on a flat screen, although some are very neat, would not qualify. What is out there now? The following is my rough shot (from another forum) at summarizing what is out there.

The FogScreen folks project a three-dimensional moving image onto a volume of suspended water particles ("fog"). This is, in some respects, an image in mid-air. I am not sure how clear the image is, but you have to admire their creativity and it is a start! http://www.fogscreen.com

I find it hard to get my hands around what the folks at Holocinema are doing, but it is impressive that they won an oscar and it sounds like they have had pioneering work and patents in the past. Maybe others can add more. http://www.holocinema.com

So... does the image moving image of the HoloDeem coupon thingy really appear in mid-air? The website shows it doing so, but I have not yet found information on how. http://www.holodeem.com

http://www.kioskmarketplace.com/news_story.htm?i=24022

Holotouch is one of my favorite technologies. In some respects, it is on the input (human to computer) rather than the output (computer to human) side of things. They have created holographic keypads that project in mid air and register finger "pushes" via infrared. Not exactly Holo TV, but could perhaps be used toward interactive holography some day. http://www.holotouch.com (pdf file = filehttp://www.holotouch.com/docs/HoloT.artkioskmarkeplace041105.pdf )

The Io2Tech folks use air turbulence to create mid-air imaging for the Heliodisplay. Looks pretty cool to me. I wonder how clear the image can really be at this point, but very creative. http://www.io2technology.com/technology/overview

LightSpace Technologies uses multiple panels to create a three-dimensional image. Probably better clarity than the fog or air turbulence approaches, but one would think that it would limit images in terms of only offer 20 points in the "depth" image projection? I could be wrong. Again, a neat innovation. http://www.lightspacetech.com

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9378644/site/newsweek/

A little older, but here is the work done at MIT.... their "Holovideo Project"

http://www.media.mit.edu/spi/holoVideoAll.htm

http://www.xenia.media.mit.edu/~lucente/holo/holovideo.html

http://www.media.mit.edu/people/lucente/holo/holovideo.html

... and work done at the little school on the west coast --

http://www.stanford.edu/~matteoja/hologram.html

http://www.stanford.edu/dept/news/relaged/940804Arc4171.html

These researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center have made headlines by using a container of gel in which to project moving holograms -- currently with applications oriented toward medical and military purposes.

http://innovation.swmed.edu/research/instr...inst_dev3d.html

There is a commercially-available product that is called holographic television, by Claro. In my view, it scores big time on the clarity side of things and would no doubt be fun thing to have in your living room (although you could probably feed a village of poor folks for years for the price!), but is not really three-dimensional. It seems to be a back-projected image projected onto a special holographic pane of glass... so that the picture appears to float in mid-air if you can tune out the glass. Holographic technology used to enhance TV -- yes -- but not really "holographic television" in my view.

http://www.pocket-lint.co.uk/review.php?reviewId=594

So... where does that leave us? Well.. this is just my first attempt to summarize this. Hopefully the collective effort of current and future participants in the forum will refine it. As of now it seems that no one yet as true, clear, interactive images projected in mid-air. Folks are projecting images on fog, turbulent air, gel, glass, multiple parallel planes, etc -- but it may be a while before you walk into your living room and click on the HoloTV. Any comments? Additions? Rotten tomatoes?

Great review, thanks!

Holodeem is just a sales gimmic. Animations of the display show an image floating out independant of the screen while actual photos of the machine are straight on - clearly a rip off from some 1990's "3D" arcade games which used mirrors to warp and project a flat image.

cheers.

I agree.... they have nothing

more on this subject:

Hubeschman, Michael, Bala Munjuluri, and Harold G. Garner, Dynamic holographic 3-D image projection, Optics Express, March, 2003, 11(5), p. 437-445. -- "display of dynamic holographic images is possible by computing the hologram of objects in a three-dimensional scene and then transcibing the two-dimensional digital hologram onto a digital mirror system illuminated with coherent light."

http://innovation.swmed.edu/research/instr...tation/dh3p.pdf

Micromirror arrays are very exciting, I wonder how many individual 1024X768 chip's would be required for a high quality-high resolution image? Furthermore I wonder what the required computational power would be required to decode such an image. Unless something drastically better comes along, I believe this technology will be the most likely platform for 3d displays.