MIT Achieves Highest Frame Rate for Holographic Videos

Experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) managed to achieve the highest frame rate for holographic videos, and to set a firm foundation for holographic TV sets, by using nothing more than an Xbox Kinect and a standard graphics chip.

The researchers used this setup to streaming holographic video nearly live at the Practical Holography conference, held by the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE) in San Francisco this weekend.

Some can't help notice that the announcement comes just one year after the January 2010 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which showed prototype 3D TV sets. Now, the next technology is already here, just one year later.

The high rate of holographic streaming that has been achieved at MIT is the result of the work put forth by researcher and team leader Michael Bove, and his team at the Object-Based Media Group.

Their new system, made up of off-the-shelf electronics, is capable of capturing visual information, use the Internet to transfer it to a holographic display, and then update those image nearly in real-time, at rates approaching those of conventional feature films.

Unlike other systems, the one developed at MIT is simple. University of Arizona researchers announced in November 2010 that they had developed a holographic system that used 16 cameras to capture data for the holographic projectors.

The MIT design only uses an Xbox Kinect for the same job. The system is therefore capable of producing images at a rate of about 15 frames per second. Conventional TV images move at 30 frames per second.

“Really, the focus of our work in digital holography – and I think this makes us pretty much unique among the very small community of people in the world even doing holovideo – is that we’re trying to make a consumer product,” Bove explains.

“So we’ve been saying, ‘How do you make it as cheap as possible – take advantage of hardware and standards and software and everything else that already exists'?” he asks.

“Because that’s the quickest way to bring it to market,” the expert concludes.