You knew this one was coming...If you have a new flat screen television, you know it goes up on a wall someplace in your living room or bedroom. But what if you could put a tv in the middle of the room and watch it from any angle?
A man in Tulsa, Oklahoma, has come up with the solution - 3D TV. And it's even better than HDTV.
He's been an attorney, businessman, and a governor's big brother, but Martin Keating's latest technological venture began all the way back at Guttenberg's press.
Keating wrote a book several years ago and got to wondering how he could tell the story in a more modern way.
"I was thinking what if we could create these scenes in people's homes and they could actually live the book and of course there was no way to do that," he recalled.
Doctors James Sluss and Hakki Refai didn't know it at the time, but they were about to begin a collaboration that might change the way we watch electronic entertainment.
Keating's idea was a full three dimensional image, something a viewer could see from any angle.
"Full color, 3D, walk around, better than HDTV. It will change the way the world communicates. You could put a Superbowl live on your tabletop," Keating explained.
Dr. James Sluss put it into technical terms.
"What we do is project invisible infrared laser beams up from the base through this image space material that we're perfecting."
Sluss, Refai and several other University of Oklahoma engineers and researchers put their heads together.
The result was a company called 3DIcon.
Thanks to new technology and good collaboration, the results came faster than anyone thought.
"You can connect our C-space display with any available 3D graphic engine in the market now," noted Refai.
Their research goes on in the basement of building four west at the O-U Tulsa campus, but the company's work did catch the attention of venture capitalists like Lawrence Field.
"We felt like the concept, the research was at such a point that it could in fact become commercial," Field said.
A few spinoff products have already hit the marketplace, and their first full three dimensional product is mere months away.
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*To watch Galen's package on 3DTV: CLICK HERE
