Hard to swallow: October 2005

A committee including researchers from Matsushita Electric Industrial and Sony have published an interim report on a Japanese project to make 3D television a reality by 2020. The targeted 'virtual reality' television would allow people to not only view high-definition images in 3D from any angle, but also to touch and smell the objects being projected upwards from a screen parallel to the floor.

While companies, universities and research institutes around the world have made some progress on reproducing 3D images suitable for TV, developing the technologies to create the sensations of touch and smell could prove the most challenging, according to Yoshiaki Takeuchi, director of research and development at Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. Ultrasound, electric stimulation and wind pressure are currently being looked into, and the ministry plans to request a budget of more than ¥1bn to help fund the project in the next fiscal year.

3D TV would have a wide range of potential uses, allowing viewers to feel a product on a home-shopping programme before placing their order, or enabling doctors to view or even perform simulated surgery on a virtual heart.

The future TV is part of a larger national project under which Japan aims to promote 'universal communication', a concept whereby information is shared 'smoothly and intelligently' regardless of location or language. Takeuchi claims that an open forum covering a broad range of technologies related to universal communication, such as language translation and advanced Internet search techniques, could be established by the end of 2005.