MIT Media Lab creates 6D imaging technology. Image: MIT.
Who needs eye-popping 3D or crystal clear HD imagery, when you can have your hair blown back by 6D? No, it’s not a belated April 01 prank story, it’s actually genuine 6D imaging technology as developed by the forward-thinking boffins at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Moreover, an MIT Media Lab team are in the process of engineering uber-realistic images that not only convey a full three-dimensional appearance, but also cast shadow and highlights dependant on their real-world physical environment and the directional intensity of localised illumination.
Labelled as “the ultimate synthetic display,” by MIT associate professor Ramesh Raskar, the technology, which requires no form of electronics or active control, will also enable imagery to alter over time as real-world illumination from the sun changes around it.
“The display should respond not just to a change in viewpoint, but to changes in the surrounding light,” commented Raskar in an official report from the renowned institute, which also outlines that the new MIT process could add an “unprecedented degree of realism” to existing 3D technology.
According to MIT, its process is based on a concept similar to the cheap 3D, motion-simulating displays sometimes seen on postcards and novelty gifts, which use a plastic overlay containing parallel linear lenses to create a visible set of vertical lines over the image.
“By using an array of tiny square lenses instead of the linear ones, such displays can also be made to change as you change the viewing angle up or down -- making a “4-D” image,” notes MIT. “This reveals different views with horizontal as well as vertical movement of the viewer.”
The team’s newly developed “lighting aware” system then introduces extra layers of lenses and screens to create an additional two dimensions of change to the image, enabling the resulting image to be seen not only based on the viewer’s positioning, but also on the direction of real-world illumination.
Raskar and the rest of the MIT Media Lab team recently ran an initial test of the technology, using the curved surfaces of a wine glass image to create a 6D picture that revealed shadows and highlights on the glass to be actively changing based upon the influence of outside illumination.
While currently still under development in MIT’s labs and restricted to a fairly low-resolution, high cost, “proof-of-concept” state, the team believes its process could produce “realistic practical-sized displays” in as little as 10 years. In terms of construction, the technology presently costs around $30 USD per pixel, with recognisable images requiring the application of several thousand pixels.
Associate professor Raskar envisages the technology eventually being integrated into the fields of advertising and entertainment, and even thinks a similar system could be used to create 6D motion pictures and moving computer displays too.
The MIT Media Lab team is expected to provide more details regarding the imaging system at the annual SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group on Graphics and Interactive Techniques) conference, which will be held this week in Los Angeles.
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