Indeed, Smith tells us, it required "the world's best programmer" to execute what the VX1 table can in real time, a title he was happy to give either to John Carmack, lead programmer on id Software's Doom and Quake, among many others, or Carmack's early rival Ken Silverman, who created the Build engine used to power Duke Nukem, among other games, back in the 1990s.
Since it's being re-drawn both on the up and down swing of the glass, you get a hologram video refresh rate of 30 frames per second, and the illusion is terrific.Ĭonstantly slicing and re-slicing a moving 3D space, synchronizing the projection and dealing with things like projector beam divergence, multiple color projections and all sorts of other issues – this requires some pretty epic programming and processing chops. The slices are stacked and re-stacked so fast that your eyes can't track the motion, and an object appears to float in the air. The system tracks the location of the glass and synchronizes it perfectly with a 4,000 frames per second projector, so that each slice is projected at exactly the right height. It breaks a 3D form up into horizontal layer slices, then achieves the mind-bending trick of projecting these slices onto a single piece of rear projection glass that's being flung back and forth in the air at 15 cycles per second on a set of harmonic resonance springs.
The VX1 table can best be described as 3D printing its image in the air. I videocalled Voxon CEO/CTO Gavin Smith to ask how the company achieved it, and was treated to a look around the company's Adelaide offices to see a couple of different types of devices in action. It operates more or less exactly like the hologram table in Star Wars, albeit usually with a glass dome over the top of it, and can display an 18x18x8 centimeter holographic image, video, game or interactive data visualization. The VX1 table from Voxon Photonics, on the other hand, requires no headset or eyewear. In the worst case, they completely remove the wearer from the real world to immerse them in virtual space. In the best case, these are a bit antisocial, stopping you from looking others in the eye. VR and AR can both somewhat replicate the experience, but they require headsets. Such things have been a long time coming to the real world. On board the Millennium Falcon, R2D2 and Chewbacca play some sort of digital board game, interacting with figures built out of light hovering in the air above a table. Interactive 3D images that appear to float in the air, above a table that a group of people can stand around without needing any special headsets or glasses: that's what South Australian company Voxon Photonics has built with its US$10,000 VX1 table.įiction has promised us holograms for decades, with one of the most famous examples appearing in 1977's Star Wars: A New Hope.