Random Accesses

If the resurgence of 3D glasses at local cinemas are any indication, we all want a bit more, ahem, depth to our cinematic experience. Unfortunately, the stylish glasses don't exactly lend themselves to an immersive experience. What would be really cool would be animated holograms.

While holograms aren't the easiest things in the world to make, it is possible to take a 3D computer model and compute the data necessary to generate a hologram that can be used to project a 3D image from a screen. Given that animation is largely computer generated now anyway, where are my holographic animated movies?

One of the problems turns out to be efficient rendering. A recent paper in Optics Express, although it presents a huge speed-up in holographic rendering, demonstrates just how difficult the problem is. The basic animation is now well within the reach of modern rendering farms—unfortunately, that doesn't leave any power left to put into important things like shading, lighting, and shadows (much less character and plot).

Source: http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news/2009/08/holographic-gpu-renders-at-near-real-time-speeds.ars