The main problem with previous computer-generated holograms has been that they don't have enough pixels to produce an image of a useful size, says Stephen Benton of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Benton says roughly a billion pixels are needed to produce a 3D image. You very quickly get into gigabytes of image data that you have to compute, store and display. The system is modular and can be scaled up or down to the required image size. Previously, this had been too complex and computationally demanding, says Benton.
Users manipulate images using tools that exist partly as real objects and partly as virtual tools.
It is like nothing else we have seen before, claims Slinger. A hologram is essentially an interference pattern generated from the object being depicted. When light strikes the hologram it is diffracted, forming a series of wavelets. Interference between these wavelets produces wavefronts that simulate the light that would have come from the original object. But with a computer generated hologram it is possible to produce interference patterns that simulate the waves from an object hanging in empty space.