| Telstra this morning beamed a live
hologram of a senior staff member between Melbourne and Adelaide
in what has been billed as an Australian first. Telstra chief technology
officer Dr Hugh Bradlow, based in Melbourne, appeared at a business
function in Adelaide as a real-time hologram and interacted with
members of the audience for around 15 minutes, the company said.
"We've all seen this sort of thing in futuristic sci-fi movies,
but the reality is that it can be done here and now, as we have
just demonstrated," said David Thodey of Telstra's enterprise
and government department.
These holograms are widely used in advertising,
art and entertainment, creating life-like 3D images that, to the
unknown eye, are as lifelike as real objects. Telstra said the real
time hologram of Dr Bradlow was made possible by the company's high-speed
networks and the Musion Eyeliner holographic projection system.
The Musion technology uses a single high definition
camera to capture the image and a single HD projector to project
it, onto a special foil. According to Musion, "All the images
used on a Musion Eyeliner system appear as three-dimensional images,
but are projected as two-dimensional images into a 3D stage set.
It is the mind of the audience that creates the 3D illusion. This
means that production costs are minimal, needing only the single
camera lens single camera lens for filming and a single projector
for the playback."
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The Eyeliner foil is the heart of the system, according to
Musion which says its business is based around exploiting a number
of patents that have been issued on producing Pepper's Ghost using
the purpose designed foil rather than glass. The Eyeliner foil is
"carefully prepared during manufacture and rolling so as to
retain maximum transparency and strength when subject to extreme
tension. The resulting smooth, blemish free surface betters that
of a huge plate glass mirror, allowing the true reproduction of
high definition video at such high quality that audiences viewing
Eyeliner video images imagine them to be real."
Telstra is not the first company to use the technology.
David Beckham recorded a message in LA, appearing as a hologram
in London. Richard Branson has also given virtual speeches, as did
Al Gore during his Live Earth concerts last year. But the most exciting
thing is that Musion have already tried out a live hologram - in
other words, we have the technology to make people appear as a hologram
in real time from anywhere in the world.
The event was carried out by Musion Systems Limited,
in conjunction with their regional partners.
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