The Prince's new cloths.

A Hollywood movie producer friend of mine was telling me about some new holographic 3D technology that Prince Charles did a presentation with in Abu Dhabi.

I am always excited to learn about some new holographic or 3D technology, especially since I hadn't heard about this one. I felt I was taken off guard, being that I am working with real holographic stuff, I really should know about this.

A quick google search found this video on youtube.
Prince Charles Speaks in Abu Dhabi Via Hologram

Little more googling, looks like is was done by a UK company called Musion.

http://www.musion.co.uk/Prince_Charles.html Yup, is was done by them.

But further inspection reviled that this is neither 3D or Holographic!

When I read there requirements it didn't add up.

• A video projector, preferably DLP with an HD card/minimum native resolution of 1280 x 1024 and brightness of 5000+ lumens.
• For smaller cabinet installations, a high quality TFT Plasma or LCD screen can also be used.
• A hard-disc player with 1920 x 1080i HD graphics card, Apple or PC video server, DVD player.
• Musion Eyeliner Foil + 3D set/drapes enclosing 3 sides
• Lighting and audio as required
• Show controller (on site or remote)

Musions technology is based on the Peppers Ghost Illusion. Something that a very old theater technique. Literally the original "Smoke and Mirrors" effect. (Wiki: Peppers Ghost)


http://www.musion.co.uk/pdf/USPatent5865519.pdf

Plain old simple mono video shot on a standard camera.

There really isn't anything there that I see that is all that exciting!!!

It really wasn't much more then the Arther C. Clarke Events that I did back in 1997.

They do use a 20Mbps MPLS connection, so that mades it really easy for a rock solid international HD video stream to be sent, but there is nothing 3D about it, it's not cheap for that kind of pipe either.

Not that this isn't of some value but it is false advertising and just buzzwords to get the media's attention and the Media is all too mindless and just eat it up.

Now anyone who is doing real 3D and Holographic video has to deal with a fake competitor!

Maybe it doesn't sound all that bad, but when I ran my streaming company back in 96, we found our selves competing against all kinds of insane technological claims from .com start ups scams that just lied. They could never deliver, but it was enough to confuse investors and hold the market back. I had to spend countless hours trying to explain that you can't get full motion, TV quality video over a 36.6K modem and later and 56K.