We’ve seen some incredible hacks for Microsoft’s Kinect emerge from the ingenuity of bedroom coders and hobbyists alike. Now the brains at MIT have weighed in with a holographic video transmission using the motion-sensor device, a laptop, and a standard graphic chip. Forget about expensive 3D TVs, holographic TVs are the future and production might not be far off if the results achieved here by Michael Bove and his student team are anything to go by.Using a single data-capturing device—the Kinect—information is sent over the internet to a holographic display, where a PC with ordinary graphics cards calculates the data and produces a real-time moving hologram of about 15 frames per second (feature films stream 24 frames per second, while TVs stream 30). The holographic display that Bove and team uses isn’t as affordable as the other hardware, but by using cheap and readily available components (like the Kinect) they hope to speed up the availability of holographic video as a consumer product, so we could be seeing it used in TV, film, galleries, lectures, and even schools.You can read more about the process over on the MIT website, and watch the video above for a demonstration that, naturally, features a woman dressed as Princess Leia asking for Obi-Wan’s help.
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Digital Holography With A Kinect, The Internet, And A Standard Laptop
3D TVs could soon be passé, as MIT researchers produce a real-time holographic display using off-the-shelf hardware.