Holographic Monitors

Basically, you just need separate input for each eye. I would imaging that VR goggles we be feasible before 3D monitors.

yes you need different input for each eye to see a 3d image...but VR technology has been around for decades and is not very exciting...i am talking about holograms which have always been static this would be an incredible jump into scifi technology...

a hologram uses a diffraction grating which is physically etched into the glass by film exposure which allows light to be projected into a real 3d image often up to 20 feet inward or outward, it does not require using special glasses or anything...this could be done on a computer to produce monochromatic 3d images like you see in star wars except that it comes out of a pane of glass

edit -- so with a conventional hologram the diffraction grating is developed by film and can only recreate that original 3d scene, but if you could dynamically control the diffraction grating pattern you could then dynamically control the hologram...a computer program which was programmed to simulate the diffractive properties of light could programmatically calculate the necessary diffraction grating for any image based on streaming 3d input, and then build this diffraction grating

by using polarized molecules in the glass, a very fine network of wires could be used to create localized small magnetic fields which would orient the molecules uniformly making the glass transparent (instead of opaque) in these regions, thus creating a dynamic diffraction grating..

edit - this computer program would need to be done directly in hardware as a special kind of graphics card for these monitors due to the intense calculations on the fly

There are already some "sorta" holographic systems out there but the real deal is still a long way away. Even further away are systems that actually create a dynamic hologram in mid air. 20 years at least and they will be hugely, grossly, expensive for a few decades after that.

ironically it was brought up in my neural networks class today that research is being done to make possible the exact idea i have proposed here

edit -- i should say, in an attempt to make possible. im not sure on the specifics but i know that a traditional hologram has resolution of half a wavelength of light. whether that high of resolution is necessary to create a hologram, and what resolution we can do now, I'm not sure

Moving holograms with low detail can be produced with 3 lasers converging in mid air. High detail, smooth motion and low flicker requires very high band width. Even worse; persons viewing the hologram are in slight danger of eye damage unless the image brightness is very dim. Neil