A team has successfully created lightsabers with laser beams which are highly luminous. This might not be a large structure but this tiny weapon is capable for a successful attempt. All this process was inspired from the science fiction and researchers have engineered battles between equally small and miniature version of starships in real time. The process incorporates launching of photon torpedoes and striking the enemy vessel, which you can visualize by the naked eye. It is so well structured that it doesn’t look like a virtual reality. The lead researcher, Dan Smalley, an electrical engineering professor at BYU, informed that what the audience sees in the scenes is real and not computer generated. It's not like the movies where lightsabers or photon torpedoes never really existed in physical space. These are real from every angle as you can see them existing in the space. It's the newest work by Smalley and his team of researchers, who attracted national and international attention years ago when they discovered how to draw screen less, free-floating objects particles, leaving a laser-lit path that floats in the air like a 3D printer for light.
The research group's new project, funded by a career grant from the National Science Foundation, takes it to the next level and produces simple airborne animations. The development paves the way for an immersive experience where people can interact with holographic virtual objects that coexist in their immediate space. Most 3D displays require you to look at a screen, but our technology enables us to view images. They create space in which they float and they are physical, not a mirage as said by Smalley. This technology can make it possible to create lively animated content with physical objects such as orbiting, crawling, or exploding every day.
To demonstrate this principle, the team developed virtual stick figures that walk in the air. They were able to demonstrate the interaction between their virtual images and humans by placing a student's finger in the center of the volumetric screen and then filming the same movie. Smalley and Rogers describe this along with their recent advances in a new article published in Nature Scientific Reports. Their work overcomes a limiting factor for optical trap displays where this technology is unable to display virtual images. Basically, Smalley and Rogers showed that it is possible to simulate virtual images with a time varying perspective projection background.
