Development of a 3D holographic areial projection system

Abstract

A holographic floating in mid air may sound like a cinematic effect, but it actually exists in real life. In this project, I shall develop a 3D holographic aerial projection system to demonstrate feasibility of such concept. The product can be applied in numerous areas, such as advertisement, exhibition, entertainment, and scientific visualization. The project comprises of two major components. The first part is on the design and implementation of an optical setup for displaying holographic images, enabling a 360 degree presentation of three dimensional (3D) images. The second part is to develop software for producing 3D video contents to be display on the holographic projector. To facilitate the ease of content development, my software is capable of parsing a standard VRML model, and renders it into a format which is compatible with the holographic projector. Special features have been included, such as transformation of the object model, to enhance the 3D visual effect. The system has been successfully built, and can be readily applied in practice. Viewers can move around the holographic projection system and inspect a dynamic 3D scene from different perspectives without the need of wearing special glasses.