It's virtual reality without the goggles and helmet, and it gives Ford designers a more lifelike view of their work.
The room is dimly lit, save for a small, ceiling-mounted projector casting a sharp beam of light towards a half-scale mockup.
The rendering is of Ford's P2000 Prodigy but the concept car is just a backdrop for the real display of advanced technology. Indeed, it is the display itself that catches your attention.
The life-like image seems to float several feet in the air, and part of the car appears to flow into a large panel, like Alice climbing into the looking glass. The Prodigy's exterior skin is a translucent red, allowing you to look inside at its component layout. Bend down and you can see the floor pan and exhaust system. Off to one side, you get a good look at the taillights. It's so real you might try to touch the image - but when you do, you come up with a handful of air. The P2000, which debuted at the 1999 North American International Auto Show in Detroit this month, is simply a computer rendering captured on a large, advanced holographic display.
Ford's official buzzword for the system is "ED Hard Copy for Designers," but the company's Director of Advanced Design Tom Scott calls it "replacement reality." It's next-generation display technology, and Ford is using it to create life-like threedimensional (3-D) images that make it easier to visualize new designs and complex data. Its purpose is to give designers, program managers and the companys top executives the most vivid visual representation of CAD data possible.
Current virtual reality systems popular among designers require users to wear special goggles, glasses or awkward helmet-mounted displays. Holograms also create 3-D images, but normally don't require any special viewing equipment. Until recently, though, holographic technology - in which complex SD objects can be recorded and reproduced on a flat 2-D surface - was sorely limited in application. Images were small and color reproduction was inaccurate. So holograms were most often used for "forgiving" applications, such as placing security images on credit cards.
Since holograms can be created directly from CAD data, their lifelike, relatively high-resolution, full-color images can be used to provide frequent visual updates on products under development, without ever having to carve clay models. Auto showgoers saw a half-size rendering of the P2000, but full-size displays will follow.
In Ford's SD Hard Copy system, the P2000 image "resides" on a grid of ten holographic panels, each 60 centimeters to a side. The individual panels are covered with 90,000 "hogels" (holographic elements), each about two millimeters square. And "each element contains an image of the entire vehicle from a slightly different angle," explains Lon Zaback, who directs advanced imaging technology for Ford. In total, the 40-square-foot holographic image contains four terabytes of data, more than used in the entire film Ntanic.
Unlike some holographic images, which must be illuminated by laser beam, Ford's display needs only to be lit by a wellfocused source of white light. The image itself is created by exposing a special film, one hogel at a time, using a device that operates much like an ink jet printer. The goal is to mass produce the printer at a relatively low cost.
And the next-generation system will likely increase the resolution four-fold by using smaller hogels, notes Mark Holzbach of Zebra Imaging, the Austin, Tex., firm that's helping Ford develop holographic technology. It should also be possible, he hints, to store additional images within the holographic panels. That could add "motion" to the overall image. Doors might open or windows roll down. An aerodynamic study might display smoke flowing over the car.
Eventually, notes Scott, the technology could be used to display a full range of products in storefront-sized dealer showrooms, or to create billboard images that appear to float in space.
"Imagine what (Steven) Spielberg could do with this," says Scott.
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