High-def 3D holographic video 'breakthrough'

High-definition 3D video displays could become commonplace thanks to a " revolutionary new approach", the developers claim.

The technology, from a German start-up called SeeReal , will be demonstrated tomorrow at the Society for International Display (SID) forum in California

SeeReal's chief scientific officer, Dr. Armin, said holography offers the only "perfect substitute" for viewing a real scene but two obstacles prevented it from going mainstream.

Firstly there was insufficient resolution: a 47in holographic display with a viewing angle of 60 degrees would require a resolution 250,000 times that of high-definition TV.

Then there was the problem for processing the enormous quantity of data when each pixel required significantly more computation than a 2D one. Realtime processing for HD holographic video would require several hundred petaflops of compute power.

Dresden-based SeeReal says it has got round these problems by using what it calls a tracked viewing window that eliminates superfluous elements, and by splitting the image into sub-holograms that reduce the compute power needed by a factor of ten thousand.

Further details will be revealed in a paper Dr Schwerdtner will present at SID.
Chief executive Mark Thorsen said: "The next step will be to finalise consumer product prototypes together with one or more technology partners. We already have a number of promising contacts in this respect.”