--European Commission-Funded HELIUM3D Project Aims for Commercial Production within a Decade
De Montfort University (DMU), which is located in the UK city of Leicester, announced Monday that it is developing a 3D TV system that will be able to "recognize where somebody is sitting in a room and what they wish to view and interact with on their television." The university says that the system--which is being developed under the auspices of a 4.2 million Euro project, dubbed HELIUM3D (for "high-efficiency, laser-based, multi-user, multi-modal 3D display"), that is funded in large part by the European Commission's Framework 7 program--represents a step towards "truly interactive 3D video games where gamers use their bodies to control the action without the need for a controller." It also says that the HELIUM3D project is exploring ways to allow viewers who are watching the same TV set to each view a different channel simultaneously, and to also choose different viewing positions within the image: thus, DMU says, people watching a soccer game in the same room could each choose the part of the stadium from which they would like to experience the action. In addition to entertainment applications, DMU says, the HELIUM3D system could be used for professional applications such as medical imaging, video conferencing, engineering design and oil and gas exploration.
According to DMU, the system's 3D effect will be delivered without requiring viewers to wear special glasses, and will use head-tracking technology that was developed during the university's previous 3D TV research projects, to deliver "the perfect image" to each viewer. The system will not only display standard 3D, DMU says, but will also allow viewers to experience an effect known as motion parallax (or, less formally, as the "look-around effect"), wherein the image has a "holographic" quality, giving it a greater sense of depth and movement than is the case with standard 3D.
The HELIUM3D project is being led by researchers from DMU's Imaging and Displays Research Group (IDRG), and also sees the participation of the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institut, Philips Consumer Lifestyle, Eindhoven University of Technology, Nanjing University, Barco (a Belgian display hardware manufacturer), University College London, and Koc University in Turkey. "The inherent flexibility of the HELIUM display takes it beyond mere 3D and will open up a whole new world of exciting interactive possibilities," Dr. Ian Sexton, head of the IDRG, said in a prepared statement. "The display will give gamers a new freedom to enjoy interactive 3D television and games--for example viewers or gamers will be able to see 3D on the HELIUM TV and also interact with the game through the viewer sensing built into the system, wherever they are in the room and without 3D glasses. This will make 3D games more natural, exciting and 'real.' The system will also be used for more serious uses such as medical imaging; doctors and surgeons will be able to intuitively 'fly' through a 3D scan of a person to make a diagnosis or to prepare for an operation, making a 3D display that will be useful to a wide audience."
According to DMU, unlike previous 3D systems that have used flat panel LCD displays in their design, HELIUM3D will use a new type of screen: the Gabor superlens screen, which DMU claims will "allow brighter whites and darker blacks, meaning the resulting image will be much more vivid than in previous 3D projects due to the use of a novel red, green and blue laser illumination source." DMU says that the HELIUM3D project is slated to run until 2010 and that its goal is "commercial production of interactive 3D TV sets within the next decade."
