p>I'm always a little sceptical when engineers claim to created real 3D displays but this report from DailyTech sounds like there might finally be some convincing if not a little low-res Holodeck style projects in the near future. The obvious next step will then be some kind of interactive position and motion sensing for the immaterial interface.

Research Website

“By creating plasma in open air with lasers, Japanese scientists are working on a true 3D display . The Japanese National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) announced an exciting breakthrough in optoelectronics — a working three dimensional display. The display does not rely on any sort of optical illusion or disorientation. Instead, infrared lasers are aligned to converge and create small amounts of plasma. The plasma acts as a floating “dot” on top of the laser grid.

The infrared laser pulses across several reflectors so that 100 dots can be created per second. The initial reports from AIST are a little light on details, but it appears as though the plasma dots can be drawn up to several meters away from the laser source. It also appears as though the device needs a vapor source with specific electron/ion content in order to generate the dots.”

Now I should be most excited about this in terms of its potential applications in Interactive Architecture but secretly I'm just waiting for the minature R2D2 toys with inbuilt 3D projection of Princess Leia saying ‘ Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi. Your my only hope.'

thanks to Usman for the tip off.