
Colossal Holograms - lelf
https://medium.com/through-the-looking-glass/colossal-holograms-b7f86f5925bd
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p1mrx
The camera motion makes it look like they're trying to hide something... like
the effect only works horizontally, not vertically.

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mhalle
The looking Glass display is horizontal parallax only (HPO). HPO is a common
information reduction method in the 3D display world. Most holographic
stereograms, all rainbow holograms, and all 3D lenticulars are HPO. Occlusion,
horizontal motion parallax and stereoscopic cues are preserved, which are our
primary 3D cues.

The loss of vertical parallax changes computation from an N squared to N
problem. An interactive display like the looking glass provides vertical
parallax cues as a result of user interaction (rotating the object vertically
with user interaction).

This class of display also does not have accommodation cues, but in the range
of 3d cues accommodation is the weakest.

Looking Glass displays are great! Shawn and the team has done careful,
practical engineering work to get these displays out there.

Ref: I have a PhD in 3D display technology and worked with holography pioneer
Steve Benton and his group at MIT to develop the most advanced holographic
stereograms at the time. I own a Looking Glass display.

~~~
chmike
Are the Looking Glass display real holograms with light interference patterns
? Or are they emitting different pixels in different view angles ?

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tgvaughan
Aren't those two things essentially identical, at least as far as the
resulting wavefront goes?

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sp332
The Looking Glass only has 45 discrete views projected across 50 degrees (25
degrees left and right of center). I have one of the smaller ones and it's a
very nice effect, but it's not the same as a "real" hologram.

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olivierduval
Do you know teh technical specs ?

\- horiz/vert max angle (to be able to walk around): the widest=the best

\- horiz/vert max angular resolution (to avoid the step effect while walking
around): the finest=the best

\- of course, the usual suspects: refresh rate/resolution/number of
colors/color accuracy/luminosity

~~~
woodrowbarlow
gathered from the website and comments here:

horizontal: 40-50 degree viewing angle, with angular resolution of 45 steps.
vertical is not paralax at all. recommended 1 - 30 ft viewing distance.

the 8k measurement is the total of all the display layers, so what you'll see
is a fraction of 8k resolution. refresh rate: 60Hz.

i think all those measurements are true for all three display sizes
manufactured by looking glass, except the smaller screens are 4k.

the blog also mentions "over a billion-count color gamut".

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maest
The video game Prey2 features similar technology also called LookingGlass. It
has a fairly prominent role in the story line.

I wonder if the naming is a coincidence or a nod.

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setr
It's also the name of a game studio with a number of neat titles, some rock
band, and perhaps most importantly, sequel to Alice in wonderland: _Through
the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There_

All of which were probably referring to the same concept: viewing the other
side of reality

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djmips
Looking-glass was just a peculiar literary term for a mirror in the 1800s. A
reflective glass you would look at.

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burkaman
Can we change this URL to the original post at
[https://blog.lookingglassfactory.com/announcements/colossal-...](https://blog.lookingglassfactory.com/announcements/colossal-
holograms/)

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ex3ndr
I have 4k version and it is very very bad. 4k is actually 4k/30 (number of
angles). Pixels have the size of a fist.

~~~
lux
Based on that, how do you think an 8k version would compare? Enough
resolution, or still lacking?

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ex3ndr
For me it just have incorrect hm "angles" just like misplaced glasses or
something like this. 8k won't help much since it is just bigger, not better
PPI.

It is just like decade old stereo camera like this:
[https://www.amazon.com/Fujifilm-FinePix-Real-Discontinued-
Ma...](https://www.amazon.com/Fujifilm-FinePix-Real-Discontinued-
Manufacturer/dp/B003ZHV70M).

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ericskiff
I have one of the smaller versions of the Looking Glass and it's genuinely
like looking into the future. It's a remarkable thing to see live. My main
complaint is the low resolution (4k divided into 45 layers).

Bigger size and bigger resolution is a great step up here - I hope they get to
continue in that direction!

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ithkuil
Do you think something like this would significantly improve experience for
remote workers?

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tiborsaas
No. Better video won't help you with the basic struggles of social life,
isolation and having to be on chat large portion of your working day.

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mikeleung
This reminds me of [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-
Uw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw) (2007) Johnny Lee's
demonstration using head tracking with infrared led's and a wii remote to
implement the same thing. Obviously that limits the effect to the individual's
head being tracked, but its amazing its been 12 years since that demo and
we're still trying to commercialize the same affect.

~~~
ksaj
That was a great video, and highly hackerific. "That would be a bit goofy" is
an expression you don't hear very often these days.

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kempbellt
Not a hologram in the sci-fi sense, but still very cool.

From what I gather, this is the same tech used in a 3DS - scaled up to an
impressive scale.

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jFriedensreich
its not. lightfield techonology is a completely different beast from parallax
stereoscopy.

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Doxin
It's the same thing in reverse. You can use a camera to capture a light field,
and then a screen with a complementary lens to project out (roughly) the same
light field.

In fact, given the principle of the reversibility of light, if you had a
screen the same size and pixel density as your camera sensor you could use the
exact same lens array to output a close approximation of the captured light
field, without any post-processing of the captured pixels!

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aaron695
A 3D hologram doesn't get you 3D medical records magically.

And if you have them, I reckon a screen with a mouse is all you need to view
them to technically know how to proceed.

Usual marketing scam, make the public think creating a 3D hologram device will
somehow get them 3D things.

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concordDance
This seems too good to be true.

~~~
pluma
Note that this "only" adds depth. It can't make anything appear to "come out
of" the screen, the effect is more like a window. It's not like holograms in
science fiction.

It's still pretty impressive tho.

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tyingq
This looks like _" coming out of the screen"_ to me:
[https://miro.medium.com/max/1200/1*-nm0AvcydVzyhgDFdh6V2g.gi...](https://miro.medium.com/max/1200/1*-nm0AvcydVzyhgDFdh6V2g.gif)

Do you mean the effect doesn't work with back to front motion? Like that pan
can't start in the back and move forward?

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pluma
Too late for an edit but I was going by what was shown in the video, which
very much didn't look it could do that.

That said, that's still basically "3D but without glasses", not exactly the
Holodeck "hard light" future tech many people think of when they hear "real
hologram".

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vilhelm_s
I mean, a real hologram (made using light interference) is also not Holodeck
hard light.

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te0006
Yes, but at least a real hologram creates an actual depth sensation as the
eye's focus needs to adapt.

This means 3d impression works even for people with reduced stereoscopic
eyesight, and does not create headaches due to a mismatch of scene depth vs.
physical display depth.

Such holographic displays do exist, e.g. www.seereal.com (which BTW recently
received an investment by Volkswagen).

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brazzy
Any info on how it works?

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matt_the_bass
There are multiple transparent lcd (or maybe led - idk) screens layered on top
of each other. A different image is rendered on each layer to appear 3D. A
single 8k video stream is sent to the display. Each 8k image is subdivided
into multiple smaller images, one for each layer. So the entire image is 8k,
not 8k per layer.

I know one of the cofounders, Alex, a bit. He’s a really earnest and excited
person. He’s been working on 3D led tech for a long time. It’s been fun to see
how’s his ideas have progressed. I have no reason to doubt their claims.

FYI, they are not the only company working on these types of displays. There
is also an Irish company (I forgot their name) working with panels made by
Panasonic. I think theirs are higher res than 8k.

~~~
jerf
Is this essentially the technology the 3DS used, only scaled up?

(I ask for clarification, not to diminish the achievement. If it is, and it
works well, it's still a nice advancement. Nor am I saying it was invented for
the 3DS.)

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Doxin
As I recall the 3DS used a lenticular lens: you see different images based on
the angle to the display. Wikipedia has some more information:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenticular_lens](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenticular_lens)

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jkoberg
> That’s why five years ago, my co-founder Alex and I started a company to
> prove that holographic displays were possible

This is spam

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Filligree
It's an ad, but it's the sort of ad I sincerely desire to see. C'mon, this is
immensely cool.

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ouid
There are two types of "this isn't a hologram" people in this thread. The
first is the group of people that think holograms are the things in Star Trek.
Those are _not_ holograms, and neither is this.

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targonca
You would need a beefy machine to render 45 8k images per frame.

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hughes
This is 45 image segments encoded into a single 8k signal. I have a smaller
one, and it's amazing, but its 4k image input results in approximately 800x600
equivalent for each rendered angle.

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jdkee
Anyone know how much these are going for, roughly?

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tinus_hn
A tiny version costs about $600, so probably a lot.

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6nf
How tiny?

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wokwokwok
9”

The 15” is $3000

They’re amazing though; I’ve seen one in person and it’s pretty much exactly
as described.

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sgt101
Suddenly I see a consumer use case for Gb fttp.

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vpribish
looks sketchy as fuck - it's a marketing piece put out by the company. Don't
bother.

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itronitron
can anyone provide a reference for the artwork of Alice at the top of the
page?

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supermatt
Eugenia Loli

[https://www.facebook.com/pg/EugeniasCollages/photos/](https://www.facebook.com/pg/EugeniasCollages/photos/)

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JumpCrisscross
How does this product change prospects for Magic Leap?

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yarg
There's overlap between the potential client domains, but this doesn't
encroach on the AR domain covered by products like Magic Leap.

And there are legitimate commercial use case for AR - e.g.: automotive
manufacturing and building construction.

The biggest impacts to Magic Leap's prospects came from the premature over-
hyping of the product as well as microsoft beating them to the punch with the
HoloLens.

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jonny383
Off-topic: Can someone please write a Firefox extension that removes that
_stupid_ fucking popover on medium "Pardon blah blah give us your money". Does
that shit really need to take over the entire fucking screen?

~~~
vallode
Really nice tip: Click the little keylock on the left side of the address bar
when on medium, go into site settings, under javascript block it and medium
articles will now load as just pure easy to read text :)

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laurent123456
For me it removes images when doing this. I'm only surprised they don't
require JS to display text yet.

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classified
The next version will use microservices where every single character on the
page will be downloaded and rendered by a different web worker. Good for
concurrency!

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jl6
Plus, makes it easy to slap on a paywall for the vowels.

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classified
And an extra paywall for ligatures. That's the ultra-premium gourmet club.

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m3kw9
Looks like 3D inside a tv. It ain’t holographic unless it projects enough for
you to touch thru it.

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Filligree
Projection is entirely impossible. The photon's path has to back-track through
the device; this is true regardless of the type of device you're using to make
it.

~~~
Someone
I would think that the limitation is that, for both eyes, the ray from that
eye through the simulated voxel has to intersect the screen.

There are voxels in front of the screen for which that holds.

