
Looking Glass – A new type of holographic interface - rmason
https://www.feld.com/archives/2018/07/the-holographic-display-of-the-future-is-here.html
======
doublerebel
I played with the large size version of Looking Glass at AR in Action conf
this January at MIT. It's really cool, and the coolest part is the interaction
is intuitive. You really can just touch a point on the hologram and have it
react at that point.

As others have mentioned, it requires pushing quite a number of simultaneous
views of the hologram through a hidpi display, the experienced resolution is
not very high as a result and the holograms look a bit fuzzy.

It is right now probably the best out-of-the box way to interact with
Holograms, especially in a shared environment. Hololens can't share holograms
by default, and even if the app has implemented sharing, the holograms can't
be touched. Meta glasses have some touchability thanks to their depth sensor,
but again there's no easy shared way to interact with a hologram.

I think AR like Looking Glass is underrated, they were very smart to use
natural interaction instead of gestures or a mouse/wand. That being said, I
don't see it competing with AR glasses longterm.

~~~
colanderman
Do you remember if the image varies in the vertical plane as well as the
horizontal? The demo videos only move the camera horizontally.

~~~
powerapple
if it is stacked screens, I don't see any reason it will work horizontally
only. I believe the view angle is still very limited. I'd love to use this for
Skype chat or something.

~~~
bawana
If the lenticular lens is made of columns (as those fake 3D postcards are)
then only horizontal shift is 3D-able. To display verticality, the lenticular
lenses could be hemispheres. However, to encode vertical 3D-ness you would
need 45 images for each 2 degrees off the horizontal so as your head bobs up
and down, it can pick up the off axis images. So that's 45 images x 45 axes =
2025 images per frame.

------
janoc
These lenticular autostereoscopic displays have been around for a long time
and never quite took off. There have been even 3D TVs (Philips) using this
idea. I am not quite sure what is "new" apart of yet again abusing the
"holographic" term (hint, it has zero to do with holograms or holography).

The major issues with these are the limited viewing angles and the enormous
bandwidth needed to both render the individual points of view and to actually
transfer them to the screen. Heck, a lot of computer games have problems to
generate stereoscopic (i.e. _2_ images) content at 60 or 90fps required by the
VR helmets such as Rift or Vive these days. And these guys want to push 45
distinct images at 60fps?

Good luck with that, especially for that ridiculous price for a tiny screen.

These guys offer a 4k, 50" screen:
[http://www.ultra-d.com/](http://www.ultra-d.com/)

~~~
maxton
This isn't quite the same as what you're talking about. The lenticular
displays only vary in the x-dimension, but this display seems to work in both
dimensions, which would probably create a noticeably better 3D effect.

~~~
modzu
looking glass is also x-dimension only:
[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lookingglass/the-
lookin...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lookingglass/the-looking-
glass-a-holographic-display-
for-3d-cre/comments?cursor=21131425#comment-21131424)

------
mosselman
"I think most people don’t want this 1984 vision of the future, where everyone
is geared up 16 hours a day."

I assume the author means the book '1984' by George Orwell and I come to the
conclusion that the author has never read the book and does not know what it
is about. Not every dystopian story is 1984. A far more logical reference
would have been to 'Ready Player One' by Ernest Cline which is in fact about a
dystopia in which people _are_ 'geared up' all the time.

I recommend both books, the first is a work of genius and is, sadly, very
relevant today and the second because it is very entertaining and might offer
insights into the development of VR in the near future.

~~~
aeorgnoieang
"1984" also just means 'dystopian'. It's not always a literal reference to
that specific work.

~~~
mung
I think it really only means 'dystopian' to people who have not read 1984.
Otherwise there is a perfectly good word:'dystopian'.

~~~
aeorgnoieang
'1984' is a particular type of dystopian; it has specific connotations,
associations, etc.

------
chmike
Holography is a very particular set of 3d image rendering technique. This
volumetric display is not holographic. To me it's a frustration. Microsoft's
highjacking of the word holography is also frustrating. Such abuse does not
server the product and it's inventors.

Truly holographic displays will emerge once we can control ligth interference
in the display.

~~~
dosy
> Truly holographic displays will emerge once we can control ligth
> interference in the display.

Could you explain this a bit more please to give an idea of the path to get
there?

~~~
_ph_
Not the poster above, but I will try a short explanation. You see an object,
because light goes from its surface (either emitted or reflected ambient
light) to your eyes. You see it in 3 dimensions, because the light differs by
the viewing angle. Holography is a technology of recording the light "emitted"
by the object. The light has to be recorded in direction and intensity. This
is done via interference between the object light (waves) and a reference
light wave, which usually is a planar wave of light.

This interference creates an interference pattern, which can be recorded by
film. The trick is, that if you develop the film to get the black and white
pattern, you can shine the reference wave onto the film and it interacts with
the interference pattern such that the object wave is reconstructed. A
hologram such is an exact recording of the light emitted by the object. This
is something the display tries to emulate by offering 64 different images, but
not quite the same. As the interference pattern is just a greyscale image, one
could use an ultra-high resolution lcd display to synthesize that - there have
been demonstrators of that, but I am not aware of a large holographic display
so far.

~~~
dosy
That's a great explanation, thanks.

For the way you described it, to me, it doesn't sound that hard.

\- Create interference pattern

\- Record interference pattern

\- Shine ref light onto pattern to recover emitted light

If done perfectly would this yield a convincing hologram (what I might try to
describe as "visual sense impression of real 3D object being present" ) ?

What are the major limitations in the current technology? You said it might be
possible for high end screen, does that mean there is hologram tech out there?
I have never seen any demonstrated.

Is there some sort of information processing problem that software could solve
on the interference pattern? Or is this more a physics problem -- maybe we do
not have the materials that can do the steps required?

~~~
_ph_
The catch is, that the patterns have the resolution of the wavelength of
light. You cannot take plain black and white film for this, you would need
extremely high resolution film material. Agfa actually produced special film
for holograms for a while, high contrast and very high resolution, but with a
sensitivity like ISO 10. The resolution is far higher than normal LCD screens
offer and that would be the main impediment. The math for calculating the
interference patterns is almost trivial, but the scale is massive. Doing it in
real-time would still require quite high-power setups, as you would have to
calculate hundreds of rays per "pixel".

~~~
dosy
This is so interesting, thanks.

From my photog background, yep ISO 10 would be very tough to work with.

------
CarbonJ
I've played around with some of Looking Glass's earlier prototypes and was
impressed with the effect. It's one of those technologies like VR - very
different in-person than seeing it in a video.

------
Animats
It's not a hologram, of course. It's a stack of flat displays.

That's been tried before, in many ways. The first try was a vibrating
mirror.[1] There's a flat rotating mirror system from FakeSpace.[2] It's not
bad; you can walk around it. Move vertically, though, and the illusion breaks
down. There's a scheme with gas ionized by intersecting laser beams. That's
very low-rez, but truly volumetric.

Eventually, someone may come up with a real hologram system with decent
resolution. A research group at MIT built one, but it was very low resolution
and single-color. It's not impossible. But this isn't it.

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gvPS1m40gw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gvPS1m40gw)

~~~
lhl
I'm pretty impressed by what FOVI3D [1] has been doing w/ their light field
displays. Here's a recent interview from SID Display Week this year [2] that's
refreshing because the CTO (in the interview) goes into some of the details of
the challenges they face and isn't unrealistic about how hard it'll be to
overcome them.

[1] [http://www.fovi3d.com/](http://www.fovi3d.com/)

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GK4544D4PUo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GK4544D4PUo)

------
rmason
I've wanted to watch a Broadway play in my living room that was
indistinguishable from being in the theater for close to thirty years. I'm
excited because this is the closest technology that I've seen that could make
this possible.

But I'm saddened if this is really the Apple II version of this technology
because if it takes another forty years I probably won't live to see it.
Always imagined that there would be sensors on the floor and ceiling, not
watching it in a glass box but if that's how it has to be I'm OK with it.

~~~
angel_j
In 40 years since Apple II, technology has doubled roughly 26 Moore's, or
moresies.

The same shift now-a-days should take only a year and half (40 / 26), which is
about how long it would take if you bought 64 Looking Glasses and built a DIY
array, and used ML to construct a 3D video from a 2D one, a la
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_reconstruction_from_multipl...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_reconstruction_from_multiple_images)

------
hateful
"The Looking Glass generates 45 distinct views of a three-dimensional scene"

Now that GPUs can reliably generate 60 FPS, this is the next step to push that
technology. Because you'll need 45x60FPS for the same quality. And then you'll
push the 45 number higher. (yes, I know the 60 isn't visible and has to do
with control input).

~~~
pasta
I'm not sure I get your comment.

In my mind you can render $x pixels at 60fps. So the number of pixels for each
distinct view is: $x / 45.

~~~
hughes
I think it's a little more complex than that. In addition to rasterizing a
large number of pixels, the entire vertex pipeline has to run 45 times to
generate 45 projections of the scene's geometry. You're correct though in that
the rest of what happens in a frame (physics, animations & other state
updates) do not have to run 45x.

~~~
gmueckl
This is an application where ray tracing for primary rays should shine.
Instead of having to project thw scene 45 times you only need 45 sets of ray
bundles, which is really efficient. The acceleration stuctures are shared
between views. With a few pixel reordering hacks you can essentially generate
all viewpoints as a single high resolution frame.

~~~
pasta
This is exactly what I was thinking about.

With raytracing you will almost get this for free.

------
JeffreyKaine
I really want this in an arcade cabinet for a streetfighter-esque game, or
side scroller!

~~~
mbroncano
I couldn’t stop thinking of [0] after reading your comment

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Traveler_(video_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Traveler_\(video_game\))

------
fhood
My first inclination was to dismiss it as a gimmick, and really it is a
gimmick, but it is so damn cool that I want one, especially if the Api's are
relatively good.

~~~
lbm
Even if it's a bit of a gimmick in its current state, it's a great step
towards something truly useful. Technology like this could be amazing in
fields like medicine and education.

------
rrdharan
This sounds cool and all but it’s not worthy of the name until you can flip
windows over and write on the back of them.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Looking_Glass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Looking_Glass)

------
cryptonector
The kickstarter page for it:
[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lookingglass/the-
lookin...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lookingglass/the-looking-
glass-a-holographic-display-for-3d-cre)

------
xori
I wonder if it's a 4k screen generating 45 different views in alternating
locations on the screen. Thus your new resolution is like 720x256.

From the videos they look higher res than that.

~~~
xori
If you were smart you could encode multiple views into a single pixel to get a
higher resolution, but then I figure that would limit your colour depth
availability.

~~~
hughes
How would encoding multiple view into a single pixel work with a lenticular
display? There needs to be a physical distance between each of the views.

~~~
opticalflow
This is not a lenticular display. It's a stack of 45 independent transparent
TFTs.

------
xixixao
This is only really valuable for multi-user scenarios. Just going with head
tracking would likely be much easier to introduce, as you don't need
specialized hardware (albeit it helps to improve quality). I remember this
from a years and years old demo made on PlayStation I think, anyhow here are
top results on this tech from Google:

[http://www.anxious-
bored.com/blog/2018/2/25/theparallaxview-...](http://www.anxious-
bored.com/blog/2018/2/25/theparallaxview-illusion-of-depth-by-3d-head-
tracking-on-iphone-x) [https://www.wired.com/2011/05/3-d-ipad-head-tracking-
app-now...](https://www.wired.com/2011/05/3-d-ipad-head-tracking-app-now-in-
app-store/)

~~~
nine_k
I can immediately imagine how several doctors could use such a display for
e.g. a tomogram or stereo-microscope output during a surgery, or something
like that.

It could also make a good in-store display.

------
tobbebex
A couple of years ago I worked with the 3d engine for an autostereoscopic
display at Setred
([https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zkwq_cQNLU8&feature=youtu.be](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zkwq_cQNLU8&feature=youtu.be)).

For us the DVI bandwidth was the limiting factor to deliver 40-50 views at
reasonable framerates (besides raw GPU computing power), so our display
actually had 8(!) DVI inputs. That also gave us a natural interface to add
distributed rendering, supporting up to 8 GPUs for rendering. In most cases
though, one monster PC with 3 GPUs and 5 DVIs was enough to produce
interactive framerates.

------
fezz
Looks like a lenticular display with some filtering and refraction to expand
the perceived focal plane outwards.

It also looks like it works best with a black background.

[https://blog.lookingglassfactory.com/introducing-the-
looking...](https://blog.lookingglassfactory.com/introducing-the-looking-
glass-a-new-interactive-holographic-display-8733cdaea40e)

------
gravypod
Unfortunate name collision with Wendle's (level1techs) and crew's Looking
Glass for sharing a frame buffer with a vm

~~~
rgovostes
It was also the name of a 3D desktop environment from Sun showed off in 2003.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Looking_Glass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Looking_Glass)

------
dbspin
Seems to be a direct successor to the 'HoloPlayer One' dev kit, shown off last
year by the same team -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJZj9Iy8Vck&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJZj9Iy8Vck&feature=youtu.be)

------
tinus_hn
Sounds like a cool idea but if you use the first name that comes to mind
you’re bound to not be the first one who thought of it. So there already are a
ton of things called Looking Glass.

------
itronitron
this is similar to what I imagined when I first read the initial press release
for Magic Leap (years ago now) albeit on a smaller scale. This looks far more
promising for the entertainment industry than vr/ar goggles. My only nit is
that they didn't use the dancing baby (from ~1998/99) for the demo video

~~~
enjrolas
all you had to do was ask
[https://youtu.be/V4vVUXNotI0](https://youtu.be/V4vVUXNotI0)

<3

~~~
itronitron
this is awesome :)

------
lawlessone
This would be great for voxatron.

------
est
Reminds me of Zebra Imaging. Does anyone know what happened to it?

~~~
jobigoud
FoVI3D.

------
_bxg1
Pretty cool, and probably will be useful in certain industries, but the title
is extremely clickbait-y. The movie holograms that are listed don't live
inside a glass box.

