3-D movies and TV technology are just the beginning. Take a look into entertainment tech’s not-too-distant future.
 

Water World

For those who believe 3-D stands for 3-dimensional, the brilliant scientists at Carnegie Mellon University have a twist for you: 3-Drips!
 

Minds at the science factory – based in Pittsburgh but with a campus in Doha, Qatar, as well – have developed a system that uses a trio of water walls, woven into a display screen, to produce 3-dimensional images. Needle-thin droplets are released in a row, representing a row of pixels as we now know them. When a projector casts the image onto the water walls, the images produced give a floating effect.
 

As developer Peter Barnum notes: “Water drops are transparent and serve as tiny fish-eye lenses. These lenses collect light and refract it out across a wide range of angles and can be among the brightest elements in an environment.” This refractory element is ideal for producing the vibrancy needed to make 3-D images.
 

The best advantage of this setup, of course, is that it will require no 3-D glasses. The water does the work. The setup, Barnum says, creates a new possibility.
 

Because water is not solid, both the outside and inside of the display volume could be directly touched, opening up a boundless array of potential interactions.
 

Television’s Next Wave

The television market is changing rapidly. From LCD to Plasma to HDTV, staying ahead of technology is hard for home-owners. The TV you spend US$1,000 on today will be US$500 in a year’s time as the technology evolves beyond it. Laser TV is now available, and will be followed by 3-D TV. Next will be Holographic TV.Two years ago, researchers at the University of Arizona made a breakthrough in rewritable and erasable holographic systems. Dr. Nasser Peyghambarian, chair of photonics and lasers at the university’s Optical Sciences department, led a team that created the first updatable 3-D displays with memory.
 

“This is a prerequisite for any type of moving holographic technology. The way it works presently is not suitable for 3-D images,” he said.
 

That initial setup – which Peyghambarian said the University of Arizona team had worked on since 1990 – produced displays that can be erased and rewritten in a matter of minutes. Television, of course, requires the images to change multiple times each second. But everything – virtual or real – starts somewhere.

Haptics – Feeling Good About Future of Touch

Haptics is focused on enabling interaction with virtual objects using a sense of touch or feel. Not surprisingly, the minds at Disney are behind the project. Just imagine the possibilities at Disney World alone if such technology were to evolve.
 

Russian scientist Dr. Ivan Poupyrev, a senior researcher at Disney Research Labs in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, says that despite recent touch technology such as Apple’s iPod Touch and iPad, “We don’t do enough with touch.”
 

Essentially, Disney’s goal is creating perceived textures, letting people virtually ‘feel’ objects on screen by stroking them with their fingers, sending a high voltage to a transparent electrode on the glass. “By varying the frequency and amplitude of the signal we can create different sensations,” Poupyrev says.
 

Haptics is not new. Video gamers are familiar with joystick vibrations such as in driving games, where the effect is to try and give a feel for the virtual road. Some mobile phones have low-grade touch responses as well.
 

University of Tokyo researchers are probing the implementation of haptic feedback with holographic projections. In such an environment, the viewer – or user – would receive a tactile response when interacting with the hologram. The effect is accomplished using ultrasound waves to create what is termed ‘acoustic radiation pressure’. Though the hologram itself is unaffected, the response from the user brings a new form of interaction to the technology.
 

Many investigating the technology believe the surface hasn’t even been scratched. When all is said and done, it may even scratch back.