[tobr]

Despite them doing their best to cover it up with quick editing and cherry picked angles, it's clear this has very low depth resolution and foggy picture quality.

If this only uses light, how would it deal with occlusion? It would be impossible to put a dark object in front of a lighter one, right?

[dezt]

I am on the Looking Glass team on Volume. I can answer you.

As far as resolution: each slice is about 104px high resolution in it's current state, the width is about 1500px in resolution. The current depth resolution is 10. Because Volume currently has 10 slices. We do use some tricks to reduce the apparently low depth resolution, for example we allow a dev to set settings to 'overdraw' the slice so slices draw parts of their sister slices, which are then blended/interpolated with shaders. It helps a lot, and in fact our tests with more slices don't seem to do much other than increase the quality and viability of wider viewing angles. At near straight on viewing angles (within 15 degrees of the center), more slices don't seem to affect the quality of the display much (interestingly).

As an additive display, you are correct, a dim object in front of a light one wont show well... it really does look a lot like 'princess leia' in the 'obi-wan come help me' scene.

There are 2 ways we found to mitigate this. 1) We allow devs to set a 'black point' which adds the desired value to all geometry, thereby having a way to distinguish 'black' from 'void'. 2) Certain applications benefit a lot from not rendering slices at all but drawing everything as a normal 3D scene and then using a shader reading the depth buffer to determine the slice of a particular pixel - hence anything in front of something else causes a 'shadow' in subsequent slices (so it -CAN- occlude in this way, but by sacrificing the view from the back side). Things like scanned human heads look very good with this method... they honestly look like ghost heads suspended in space inside Volume.

Anyway, I hope it answers your questions. (I am the main tools dev).

[tobr]

Thanks for the answers! I think it looks like interesting tech and it could be fun to play around with it, despite the limitations.

But I really think you should reconsider the messaging around the product. I'd imagine most of your potential customers would be tech-savvy enough to ask the questions raised in this thread. Right now your marketing material is making us suspicious; it looks like you have something to hide.

I think you'd be much better off if you were transparent about the technical limitations, so as not to be mistaken for another Cicret Bracelet (https://youtu.be/KbgvSi35n6o). Getting that out of the way would allow you to focus your story on the possibilities, why this tech is cool (because it is!).

Also, judging by your description some of the material on the site is very deceptive, such as the animation with the horse. It appears to be very high resolution, there's no "slicing" even at acute viewing angles, and it has dark objects occluding lighter ones. That's not really OK.

[dezt]

Thanks for the feedback. Knowing precisely what threw you off is super valuable to know, and I will directly tell the team members in charge of marketing about it. I can also tell you for sure that there was no intention to deceive or misrepresent. In fact, anyone at all who is in the NYC area is welcome to see and judge Volume for themselves at our Brooklyn lab. We have a 'library' set up exactly for that purpose - to let the public come see and play with it! :)

However, I also definitely see what you are saying (and I will push for the horse in particular to be changed or updated). If there are any other things that threw you off, please do post in reply.

For anyone interested to drop by the lab and see Volume for themselves feel free to email: [e-mail] (the lab is at the North tip of Greenpoint Brooklyn, across the bridge from the Vernon-Jackson stop on the 7 train)

[cma]

Yes, kinect 2 has around 200,000 pixels from the depth camera (512x424). I believe they said this thing only has 3,000,000 voxels. That's like 145x145x145. Barely enough to have a few voxelized Windows 3.1 desktop icons bouncing around.

It definitely seems like just something cool to have sitting around at this stage, like a lava lamp or something.

As long as they can keep improving the res, it could eventually be useful, but will they get there before unobtrusive AR glasses?

[Retric]

~1500px X 104px X 10px which probably is enough to be interesting and of course this is a gen 1 device. I suspect bandwidth is a major issue as this is already close to 1080p pixels.

[TeMPOraL]

I suppose it is possible but you'll get additive blending. It'll look unrealistic, but sometimes that's a feature.

[shultays]

It says "2 million 3d pixels", which is pretty low in my opinion too