The Volumetric Display was a project I worked on with the several members of RIT’s Society For Software Engineers and College of Imaging Science

It consists of a spinning mirror and a projector that displays one of 96 different persppectives for every rotation of the mirror. It was a great multi-disiplinary project, and I personally got to explore things from computer graphics to socket programming.

After a few dead-ends we arrived on a system where we could take a given 3D object file and generate images 96 different perspectives with an automated blender script. We would load the 96 images into our projector through serial (that’s where the socket programming came in!) and cycle through them while a motor would spin the the mirror below. The motor and the projector were synced with an FPGA board.

After five months of work, we were able to display a 3D monochrome object. We presented our display system at ImagineRIT 2013 (an innovation and creativity festival) and took home the Paychex prize.