Sony was one of the pioneers in the field of 3D display solutions, and it seems that the Japanese company is keen on maintaining that leading role. And that's because they've just presented their RayModeler, a display that will allow users to view full-color volumetric objects from just about any angle.

The device, which is, for the time being, just in prototype stage, uses LED display solutions and can show no less than 360 different images in all directions, at 1 degree intervals. The fact that these images are actually separated, even by such a tiny interval, helps the device create the 3D image within the viewer's brain, much like shutter glasses do nowadays.

Naturally, for the time being, we're not talking about an extremely large image, the display being limited to 27 centimeters in height and a 13-cm diameter. However, that should prove to be quite enough, for a variety of purposes.

The device comes equipped with a digital video input port, which makes it fairly easy to connect to any computer. So, it's likely that gaming might actually be a very interesting application for this thing, at least at some point in the future, although we will probably be talking about some specially-designed software applications.

The 360-degree volumetric image is generated by a graphics processor in real time, with users being able to easily move/interact with the object withing the 3D display. And speaking of interactivity, it's extremely interesting to point out that this device also comes equipped with a hand-activated motion sensor, which allows the object within the display to rotate, in order to match the user's position.

Of course, such a system will require some specialized content, which will be provided either with the the help of 3D modeling software applications or by a specialized capture system developed by Sony, which includes eight cameras placed around the person being recorded at 45-degree separations.

The possible applications of such a solution are extremely interesting, and we're actually looking forward to seeing Sony come up with a real-life, production-ready model as soon as possible.  




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