We are used to interact with computer via devices such as mouse or keyboard, but there are new possibilities, real technological innovations that break the boundary between science fiction and reality.
In 70’s, the movie Star Wars showed a futuristic communication equipment, which was able to display a recorded message as a 3D hologram.
Does all this is still fiction?
For people of that time, without cell and internet, that was only science fiction, and today, 30 and few years later, many may still consider as fiction. But they don’t know that this technology not only exists as it can be used as a marketing strategy, in commercial scale, causing great commotion into a public that still can get chapfallen with holograms.
Get rid of tendonitis!
The weary routine of working with computer may cause some sort of tendonitis in the shoulders or the wrists, but why we need to continue with this today? The ergonomics and human-machine interaction is not restricted anymore to a person sitting in front of a computer. There isn’t more need for an instrument like a keyboard or a mouse to point, click or interact with an interface, it’s already commonplace.
At the movie Minority Report from 2002, Tom Cruise was able to interact with a super computer without using any device, only moving his hands loosely in the air like a maestro governing an orchestra.
Today it is becoming increasingly common devices like Microsoft Surface, Atracsys beMerlin or the Cinergy Labs Project Maaestro, able to create a more advanced interaction than the current man-machine interface, based on someone sitting interacting with a mouse or keyboard to use a computer.
Atari's control and mouse generation
Another point is, taking apart who already was an adult when the PC era started, the first interest of children in computer are games and, decidedly video-games like Nintendo Wii got its top position, and now a generation of children will grow and will be more eager for freedom in motion than the older people. Remember that today, they stop playing video-games because they get tired of jumping and moving, not because the wrist is hurting like us at that time of Atari, when you stayed pressing the so hard red button from that pre-historic control.
Using a mouse is more comfortable than trying to reset Enduro, but nothing better than moving freely.
We must be more free yet
However, this freedom of movement isn’t the new interfaces apex. This type of technology, although most advanced and cutting-edge, is very dependent on a flat surface to be projected, which may be a table, a TV, a wall or a display loose in the air, but stuck to the roof.
There is something basic about it: we don’t live into a 2D world, plan and flat. Yes, we live into a 3D world, we look back, forward, left, right, down and up... But where are those motions into the interfaces that exist nowadays? Why are we so accustomed and accommodated to don’t get, touch, turn and extend anymore and also many other movements that can be done and this current pair of mouse/keyboard are limiting us?
It’s clear that any innovator technology is expensive, will take a while to become residential. But there was a day that cell phone and computer was very expensive and something only for the riches.
Why holograms will revolutionize interfaces?
Until today all interaction with virtual world was 2D, we haven’t had yet the opportunity to “pick up” a link loose in the air by the X, Y and Z axis, instead, we only could, until now, just click the mouse on the plan of the X and Y. Something very ethereal and distant for those who have a body, too much virtual.
Or more simply and directly: why serious adults in their suits, journalists and fashion designers with inflated egos, children, nerds sci-fi fans, people with tendonitis, ergonomics defenders love when they see and interact with something that is virtual, but 3D as real life. May not yet be tactual, but it’s the closest to the real that we have available today.
What has been done and turned past
Telstra, an Australian telephone company, innovated in May 2008 when they said that their ISP has a bandwidth so stable and fast that it was able to transmit a video conference in real-time with a hologram projecting images captured by a webcam connected to internet.
CNN, one of the biggest channels of TV journalism, had in November 2008, the virtual presence of a holographic reporter, in real time being displayed in the studio and televised to the world.
But before that in 2007 the Italian brand of jeans Diesel exhibited holograms to create visual effects in one of their fashion show, and in 2006 the top-model Kate Moss appeared as a hologram in another show. Très chic, non?
Hologram draws attention
In 2005, the Lexus car was launched with a marketing action using holograms in some super crowed places as Times Squares in New York, Miami and Los Angeles. The effect of the action? Clanfallen and mouth open, and look ... they weren’t children anymore.
Another campaign was HP in Singapore in 2007, again the same effect ... Adults acting like fools and basic viral marketing: "Did you already see the hologram?”. The cool in this video is to show that besides the people trying to touch the holograms, there are also passersby’s opinions.
Making holograms is still cult, hyper hi-tech and is epidemic: publish a marketing action with holograms and, ouch, earn a free viral spreading your product around the world through blogs, youtube, social networks and the TV news.
The state of the art in interfaces
What's more revolutionary in Holograms and interfaces isn’t much exploited commercially yet, but without doubt, will soon transform our environment and change our interaction with machines, especially when its use becomes common and residential in everyday life.
You can design anything on hologram, even 2D images as photos. But to use the hologram to its maximum power and causing a real three-dimensional effect, the source image must be a 3D video, like the cartoons or from medicine’s magnetic resonance.
The current computer interfaces capture user’s movement (either by mouse or touching a 2D surface) in the two axes X and Y, but what a holographic interface allows for so innovative is the differential that you can capture the movement in three axes: X, Y and Z. So you can see and access your saved photos on a website "getting" them loose in the air, if you deepen your hand (motion in Z) you’ll be able to get a different image, such as a movement in our real world .
Say goodbye to tendonitis, the sore wrist, the sound of mouse clicks and the keys being pressed. The concept of flat desktop applications will move to 3D space, virtual yet, but closer to the real. Actually, a more perfect reflection of real life.
The owners of this technology
Microsoft, Google, Apple? No...these companies still depend on desktop concept, a linear and plan surface. But certainly, when this get popularized they will show their force, optimizing the applications and making them common.
In holograms market, there are other companies that dominate, with a profile more dedicated to research and they are investing in this technology, developing more innovatives products. From what i have researched i can cite three: Lm3labs, Io2 Technology and Provision.
Better than talking about them is to show their videos. And worth a visit to see the videos that they have to demonstrate this technology in their sites.
Io2 Technology (resold by Woehburk)
Future interfaces
As these companies videos show, the technology of interactivity and holograms projection already exists, but i couldn’t find a concrete example that illustrates how this technology can be applied in day-to-day to help us with something useful and not merely illustrative as moving a globe or rotating a holographic logo.
However, a fictional example of what can already be done is the TGC of israeli designer Ivan Tihienko. He created a hyper cool design of a holographic interface, not yet implemented, but entirely possible:
In conclusion, i rebound again: this type of application is already possible to become real. Only lack an Apple, Adidas or a Nike to put the money to go around the world. A world in 3D and holographic!
All this paraphernalia is expensive (easily reach 20 thousands a projection with the size of a 14" TV) and the picture quality isn’t perfect yet, but given the advances in technology soon we’ll be in a world increasingly more like Minority Report, with holograms being able not only to display, but to collect data and spatially interact with us, capturing our movement and starting a new era in the field of visual interfaces.
It's just a matter of time to see who will launch first.
I just want to point out that the CNN hologram wasn't in studio. The video of the reporter was captured by a few HD cams in a tent on location. Those feeds where sent to CNN HQ and when the reporter was on air. The cams in studio matched motion with the ones in the tent. The tent image was then overlaced ontop of the video from the studio, and sent out to your TV. Much like the graphics you see on air everyday. The reporter was never seen in the studio.
Thank you. Most interesting and entertaining!
web dep qua :)