Technique makes more efficient, independent holograms | Hacker News Reader

Technique makes more efficient, independent holograms

seas.harvard.edu

45 pointsjonbaer9 comments

In my teens (90's) there was a holographic arcade. I don't remember the name, but if I recall correctly, it was about a time-traveler cowboy. The game mechanic was basically a duel, quick aim and shoot when each phase started. The holograms were real life actors.

It was beautiful, very fun, interesting and the game mechanics were very much connected to the hologram feature (unlike current 3D movies that, for some reason I can't understand, are a commercial success). I never understood why I never saw this or evolutions of this kind of arcade anymore. It was the future, a smart, not utopical or "only good in theory" future.

The only problem it had was that it was very expensive to play and very short/easy to die. It was basically a sequence of quick interactions intermediated by cut scenes, and it gets harder and harder. But these are problems that are not that hard to fix.

EDIT: Found the game.

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Traveler_(video_game)

Gameplay video: https://youtu.be/ZI6h0Sg73yw

Hate to wreck your childhood, but Time Traveler used a CRT combined with a concave mirror to create the 3D effect. No holograms involved at all.

https://www.google.com/patents/US4776118

Yes, I kind realized that reading the wikipedia article. "Holographic" effect as an illusion. :(

Any games were ever created with real holograms?

Atari tried a handheld game system called "Cosmos" back in the late 1970s/early 1980s. Never made it past prototype stage.

http://www.atarimuseum.com/videogames/dedicated/cosmos/cosmo...

As far as I am aware no one has ever made a proper holographic game, as in a game with parallax on the display.

Most true holographic displays are still under lab conditions with high power lasers, expensive optics and precision setup. Maybe someone at a lab has hacked together a game of sorts though.

You could probably create a sort of holographic game with a lenticular display. You would have slight parallax with a couple of views, it would be quite rudimentary though but a fun project.

Lenticulars generalise to full parallax with tiny circular lenses instead of cylindrical ones. The only thing preventing this from being a viable "holographic display" is the resolution/DPI required of the active display technology. When this eventually comes to pass (and it will) it will be a revolution like VR, but better.

Just found it irl last week in NYC, there's a place called Barcade that has it. Brought back memories.

Awesome, I am thinking this could be used to create an animated hologram by quickly changing the polarization of the indcident light on the hologram.

That would be very impressive to see.

You can already do that quite well by recording two different holograms on the same plate with different reference beam incident angles. You select the image by varying the angle of the replay light. You can fit at least 4 images on a plate that way (left, right, up down).

This technology is very cool, but sadly like many holographic research projects it's a) impractical and b) not in demand.

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