Why haven't volumetric displays taken off?

[light_tech]

I see volumetric displays at conferences, in advertising, and super niche use cases.

It's usually something like the Voxon or Hypervsn, or some lesser known fog display.

It looks cool in person. Not sure if it's too expensive, hard to use, or just not solving a real problem.

But I'm curious why hasn't this stuff taken off?

Are volumetric displays a dead space? Is anyone on HN working on this stuff or seen anything interesting in volumetric display tech?

[apothegm]

Bulky? Costly? Software doesn’t support it? How much do they cost, anyway?

I bet they’re also absolutely awful to read/write text or code on. And the quality for 3D uses is still mediocre.

I could imagine their having an application in CAD and 3D modeling if the price were right. But the software tooling would first need to be able to support the display. And I doubt that’s a dimension (ha!) that would be worth their while to compete on (bit of a chicken/egg problem).

[light_tech]

that's a good point it feels like you'd need an easy way to convert stuff into a volumetric display format. otherwise it just won't work

i agree with you about CAD/3D modeling. it feels like there's a benefit here but again you'd need to interface with the extremely complex software already being used

still, it feels like you would have seen SOMEONE try this by now? Even among the existing Volumetric Displays I don't see any integrations with 3D software. weird.

[X-Ryl669]

Because it's missing (interesting) content maybe?

Content is a bandwidth issue. If you need so much bandwidth for a flat, planar 4k stream, how many more do you need for a 100 planes (still pretty flat IMHO) for depth ? Or 1000 planes ?

Maybe it can explode with Gaussian Splats, since it's a convenient way to save a volumetric scene, but, until now, no one made a Gaussian Splats video, so I wonder the bandwidth and processing power required for these too.

[light_tech]

good point it's like the ongoing VR problem in that there's just no killer content that would convince you to buy one.

btw there is some video work being done on Gaussian splats: https://shape-of-motion.github.io/

[JohnFen]

My guess is that this type of display is inherently a niche product. It would be terrible as a general-purpose monitor replacement, for instance.

[light_tech]

right, there's no benefit to replacing a monitor with a 3D display especially if they're massive/bulky/loud