Welcome to SmFOLD Blog

Welcome to the SmFOLD blog page. We will post new information and write comments about this ongoing project as warranted. We hope you find the information and comments helpful as we pursue the development of a 3D streaming standard that helps the industry develop and display 3D content to a wide audience.

We are happy to be hosting the workshop along with our partners and are looking for a great start as we begin to identify the needs of the industry and the areas where current technologies fall short. We are looking for new and innovative ideas on solving the problems associated with creating and delivering 3D content for emerging and future generation light field and holographic displays. This will be a long process and the sooner we get started the sooner we can achieve the goal of 3D displays in general use for home, industry, and government.

Current mainstream programming interfaces and display technologies work fine at displaying 3D data on a 2D screen. However, there is so much more information in a true 3D representation of that same data than can be perceived on a flat plane. Those of us who have been working in the field understand that there is value beyond the ‘wow’ factor in delivering a scene with strong depth cues. Complex data can often look like just noise when presented flat but details about the data come to life when shown in 3D. It is our belief that as new displays become available and the studies are done that we will find enhanced learning, better retention of information, and faster more robust decision making once true 3D displays are widely available.

The challenges are many but the trends in hardware, software, and bandwidth are all moving in the right direction and we are confident as we start this process that the reality of true 3D streaming is not just a pipe dream.