You think thats exciting...!...check this out...
3/4 years ago I was sound engineering the Annual FT Technology and New Media Awards in London...a ceremony dedicated to innovation in new technology...full of nerds basically, but fascinating. The guest speaker, Mr Douglas Adams, had his introduction speech pre-recorded using a new 3D Hologram projector and it was playing in the entrance hall as you walked in. It was 270 degrees of an absolutely perfect, colour, representation of his head talking. About 50cm squared in size. You could put your hand through it and it would merely look like a projection on your hand, but as soon as you pulled it out again you would see this perfect 3D representation of a talking head floating 3 cm off the bottom of the projector.
Now the really cool thing about this was, not only was I blown away by this Star Trekkian technology, I also got a chance to speak to the designers. It was 3 geezers who live in the south of france and have been working on the project (at that point) for over 5 years using private funding. They very excitabley told me that they were very very close to developing a full room (10mx10m - 90 degrees)projector, but were being held back by budget....they had calculated it would cost almost 25 million to make. Apparently the projector they had brought along to the FT Awards was their only prototype and that was worth over 5 million at the time.
I have no idea what happened to these guys, but I just presume that they're still dedicated to it - they all had pretty much gone bankrupt getting the prototype made, but were showing it off at various technology events in the hope of finding investors. It was truly remarkable stuff - and I don't believe for one minute that we've heard the last of them. You heard it here first
Thu Mar 04, 2004 1:48 pm 
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