An interesting idea, but it may be short-lived. They're essentially using a 3D printer as a poor man's 3D hologram system. Very nice application of the technology, but once we commercialize actual holograms it'll be obsolete - in much the same way slides were replaced with monitors.
I think it's more likely that AR or VR will be used for this purpose. It's already pretty trivial because they've already created the 3D model representing the data, all they have to do is throw it into a game engine.
AR and VR still aren't quite as convenient as a real 3D model you can walk around and point at. The technology isn't there yet. But it's true, once it reaches that point it might be used for this and would replace the 3D-printed models even faster.
IIRC the data bandwidth requirements for any holographic projection that isn't static is astronomical. We'll have the display technology well before we have the bandwidth technology for animated holographic display at any reasonable frame rate and resolution.
I completely fail to see how big data comes into play at all. All they mention is that the use geo tagged twitter that that is specific to MIT. I don't that visualizing a well defined subset of data on a 3D space was really related to the problems presented by 'big data'.
I used to volunteer teaching English to Chinese kids from migrant families (displaced within China). One of the ways I illustrated the value of English was to print several objects of differing size. Those sizes each represented the average salary of a given profession in China. Then I had a piece which would nest on top of that object that showed the value of English- the additional salary an English speaking Chinese professional in that field could expect. The physical, tactile experience- objects of very different sizes with variables they could manipulate with their hands really got the point across in a way to those kids that graphs never did.
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[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 31.9 ms ] threadThat we can use various methods to manipulate AR images, and that with a little geometry, we can all see the image in the same place?