10 ms·

The Looking Glass – Holographic Display

223 points by kgwxd 8y ago

samstave 8y ago
The only thing that was negatively conveyed in the video, is that it was apparent that the FOV on the device is narrow... At one point, the camera shifted and you could see the image in the device fade out... Also - it seems the viewing angle is fairly specific? What would these look like mounted to a wall, perpendicular to the floor? Are they usable? Whats the limiting factor on size?
- sp332 8y ago
  It's 45 views across a total of 50 degrees, that's 25 degrees off-center left and right. And there's only a single vertical angle. What gets displayed in those views is 100% implementation-dependent. There's no standard for how "deep" the objects should look, and there's no standard for the vertical angle either. So whether it will look good on a wall is content-dependent. I suspect that most content being made specifically for the Looking Glass will have a downward viewing angle in mind, as would be natural for having the device on a desk in front of you.
  - clort 8y ago
    One of the other commenters suggests that it is displaying onto several layers of glass inside the block; I didn't watch the video but I wonder if the surfaces that it is displaying on could be curved in addition to this within the block, so that the image has a wider field of view..
    - ARothfusz 8y ago
      It is not displaying on layers in the block. I have a 15" LookingGlass. The depth appears continuous, not in discrete layers. The field of view is, to me, very wide. I'm not trying to show it to an audience and it is more than enough to immerse me. It is also important to note that the field of view comes with parallax: you can really see around corners. It is not just a wide field of view on the same stereo pair.
      - VikingCoder 8y ago
        It's NOT layers in the block? What happens if you move your head up and down relative to it (vertical angles), does the object not get vertical parallax?
        sp332 8y ago
        It's definitely not on layers. There's a weird perspective illusion vertically but it's not parallax and you can't "see around corners" vertically. It's a lenticular effect, horizontal only. Check out the Vimeo holographic channel: https://vimeo.com/channels/thelookingglass https://vimeo.com/channels/thelookingglass Each video is a 5x9 matrix and each view is a different angle. If you're working with a 3D object and not a video it's the same deal - it has to be rendered from 45 different perspectives and these are sent to the device separately.
        VikingCoder 8y ago
        It's 5x9, but that's just how it's stored, right? The actual data comes from a linear array of 45 cameras, right? Or is it a curved array of 45 cameras along an arc?
        sp332 8y ago
        Right, I think a linear array would work best since it matches where your eyes will be when you move left & right in front of the screen. https://lookingglassfactory.com/how-it-works/ https://lookingglassfactory.com/how-it-works/ It shows up on HDMI as 2560x1600 but I don't know how the physical panel is laid out.
        ARothfusz 8y ago
        There is no vertical parallax, just horizontal.
      - samstave 8y ago
        Could you ostensibly have a giant wall of this and make it a virtual 3D aquarium? Seems so... A sni[ing game would be fun - with a foxhole view where you can move behind occlusions and shoot at small things far in the distance... The feel is that of a periscope's view though...
chasing 8y ago
The effect is really cool -- I've seen these in person. It's like a really well-done, high-resolution take on those lenticular plastic 3D images. It does look truly volumetric as long as you're kind of roughly in front of it. But if you go too far off to the side the effect breaks down a bit. Inexpensive 3D displays that don't require eye-tracking a la the Nintendo 3DS would be quite a nifty development.
- petermcneeley 8y ago
  I did my own version of the lenticular 3D this as hobby project. You need quite a high resolution (density) display. You also need to configure the output very accurately so that it corresponds to the final desired image for each eye. Because of how an LCD displays color you this is an even more complex translation. However the advantage of eyetracked lenticular over "The looking glass" would be resolution. (there might be other FOV and effect distance advantages as well)
  - darkmighty 8y ago
    With lenticular arrays you don't even need eye tracking (in theory), since you can directly synthesize a geometric light field (that is, a bundle of rays around each point with different colors for every direction), but you'd probably need quite a few pixels per lens. If the lenses are <1mm diameter, and you need say >10x10 pixels per lens, that's at least 100ppcm, or >250ppi, preferably a lot more. Latest phones do seem to reach that level. In the end the satisfaction level needs to be evaluated experimentally of course, I wonder how nice one would be with current technology (say, an iPad Pro display), did you build a prototype?
    - petermcneeley 8y ago
      Yes I built a prototype. You can order lenticular sheets online. I have an iPad Pro but the distance between the LCD to the screen surface is too great to use normal lenicular sheets. A 4k small laptop screen would likely be enough for clean binocular separation however I only had a 1080p 10inch display. While this is difficult at the hobby level this already seems to be widely commercially available http://www.alioscopy.com/en/3Ddisplays.php http://www.alioscopy.com/en/3Ddisplays.php
kgwxd 8y ago
I found this through the Voxatron [1] blog [2]. Looks like they support it now. I think a setup like that would really hype kids up to design and program. [1] https://lexaloffle.com/voxatron.php https://lexaloffle.com/voxatron.php [2] https://lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=32743 https://lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=32743
- aquova 8y ago
  This was my first exposure to it as well, I follow the developer of Voxatron/Pico-8 on Twitter and they were posting videos of it in action a few months ago [1]. Voxatron got an update recently that is beginning to show a lot of promise, but it's still a bit incomplete to make anything more than neat visual scripts or basic drag-and-drop games. However, I would be very excited to see the platform develop further, and to try out a Looking Glass for myself (they're far too rich for my blood for the time being). [1] https://twitter.com/lexaloffle/status/1027606480030117890 https://twitter.com/lexaloffle/status/1027606480030117890
  - mhb 8y ago
    far too rich for my blood I thought $400 was surprisingly reasonable.
    - kgwxd 8y ago
      $499 (let's say $500 to avoid the mental rounding down bias), +$100 if you want the Leap Motion, +$25 tax, + $50 shipping. My cart is at $673.92 USD. Having a hard time clicking "Checkout", but I'm not leaving the site yet :) Still seems reasonable in my opinion.
ericskiff 8y ago
I've seen this thing in real life and it's astounding. In the early versions, it was clear that the magic was happening by projecting slices onto the surface of multiple sheets of plexiglass. In this production version, the glass is 100% transparent, and the slices of image appear to be a seamless 3D whole. Aside from the fact that it's not in open air, it's just like looking at a real hologram. As you move your head, you're seeing a different point of view, and the object looks like it is really inside that block of glass moving around. I don't think I've seen any consumer gadget that seems so thoroughly from the future in the last 10 years.
- sp332 8y ago
  I have one of these and it's a very cool effect. Looking at a single image, the resolution seems impossibly low. But as VR developers discovered, getting the brain to accept an image is much more dependent on the "solidity" of the image than on the resolution or texture detail, and this device nails that. Plus with a moving image, your brain is good at integrating texture information over time and your experience will feel merely "grainy" and not super blocky.
- calhoun137 8y ago
  > Aside from the fact that it's not in open air I once put a lot of work into researching how to build an "open air" 3d hologram like they have in the movies and came to the conclusion that it is basically against the laws of physics. This is because its impossible to bend light beams in free space. There are however a lot of cool tricks and hacks, 3d holograms are a really cool subject, this Looking Glass product looks fantastic I want one. One of the biggest problems these kinds of holograms in a box have is, even though horizontal scrolling works fine, being able to look at it from the top and bottom does not. Here [1] is a video of a 3d hologram in a box based on a rotating mirror that has a head tracker for viewing from different vertical angles. It's really cool but the thing rotates so fast it's also extremely dangerous. Another approach for open air 3d holograms is to create a series of small explosions that emit light by shooting dangerous high powered lasers into the air and using plasma emission. See [2] Finally here is a cool video of some fan based holograms [3] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gvPS1m40gw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gvPS1m40gw [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfVS-npfVuY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfVS-npfVuY [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wjvq0SNczrI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wjvq0SNczrI
LyalinDotCom 8y ago
their website seems down (maybe thanks to HN?) but there are videos of this you can check out on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=looking+glass+holographic+display https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=looking+glass+h...
- enjrolas 8y ago
  working on this now, thanks HN :)
  - enjrolas 8y ago
    Aaaand we're back
proee 8y ago
Reminds me of the video game way back in the 90's called "Time Traveler". This was in the expensive section of the arcade and cost around a dollar to play - a huge premium over the nickel machines. My brothers and I finally decided to pooled our money together to play the machine - the gameplay was weak but the visuals were cool! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Traveler_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Traveler_(video_game)
- michaelchisari 8y ago
  If I remember correctly, the gameplay was similar to Dragon's Lair: Cool to watch, infuriating to play.
nkg 8y ago
It looks really cool, but makes me want a real cube that you would be able to walk around and see every angle of your 3D model.
aerovistae 8y ago
Slightly funny that the makers of one of the most cutting edge display technologies in the world have an absolutely atrociously designed website.
- partiallypro 8y ago
  How is it poorly designed? It looks like every other website, it sort of resembles theverge.com. Not a fan of the bold font, but otherwise it looks no different than any other major site.
joering2 8y ago
Amazingly looking.. but haven't we been there before? JooJoo tablet? Anyone remembers it? Then Apple came with iPad and JJ disappeared. What's the chances one of XX Apple future tech Skunkworks teams are NOT working on something similar with billions of dollars in R&D founds?
tostitos1979 8y ago
Is this pepper's ghost, or something different?
- Ruthalas 8y ago
  The display volume is made up of layers of refractive material, and the software generates 45 perspectives of the displayed model, which are refracted to the appropriate viewing angles. [1] Their website terms it a, "...lightfield display with volumetric characteristics". [2] [1] https://youtu.be/sWevv3zotXY https://youtu.be/sWevv3zotXY [2] https://lookingglassfactory.com/how-it-works/ https://lookingglassfactory.com/how-it-works/
Feneric 8y ago
How well does it work with Linux? I didn't see anything about it on the site. It'd be neat to hook up to my laptop, but if Linux isn't supported at all there'd be no point.
- kelvin0 8y ago
  OK, so the fact that it isn't (yet) supported by Linux completely invalidates the concept? I've heard of Linux zealots, but this is something else..
  - aetios 8y ago
    I think he means there's no point hooking it up to Linux if there is no support :)
- bacon_waffle 8y ago
  Mine should be arriving tomorrow or Monday, I'm intending to try and use it with Linux. From what I can tell, the display more-or-less presents as a normal 2d monitor which expects a tiled grid of views that differ in azimuth: have a look at https://vimeo.com/lookingglassfactory https://vimeo.com/lookingglassfactory
  - bacon_waffle 8y ago
    Correction - the views are interleaved, and the details of that interleaving depend on the calibration of your individual Looking Glass. https://github.com/lonetech/LookingGlass https://github.com/lonetech/LookingGlass has a Python tool that grabs the calibration out of the looking glass, and an OpenGL shader that can be used with MPlayer to take the tiled videos from the vimeo link and display them on the LG. It's a really cool effect in person - I'm totally glad I sprung for one!
beezischillin 8y ago
Could you theoretically run a game like Trials from Ubisoft on something like this? From what I understand of the technology it would be like an ideal use case for it. Seems like an amazing experience at least in theory.
zik 8y ago
This isn't actually "holographic" as such. Holography [1] specifically refers to creating a 3d effect by recording light diffraction and interference wavefronts. At this point though the term has become so corrupted that most people think that holography means any kind of 3d display without glasses - which is definitely not what holography is. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holography
- Aeolun 8y ago
  If everyone thinks that’s what Holography means, then for most intents and purposes, that’s pretty much what it means.
  - gcbw2 8y ago
    I can't say if it is a clever pun that you made up the meaning of the word "everyone" to exclude the author of the post you replied to.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- pndy 8y ago
  I'm pretty sure the last time we had here thread about The Looking Glass, someone said it's actually a volumetric display which has nothing to do with holograms beside marketing gimmick which tries to sell it as such display and technology
peteforde 8y ago
I was a Kickstarter backer, and have been developing experiments on it nearly full-time since it arrived about a week before Christmas. It was, amusingly, the first time I've tracked a package minute-to-minute since we used to watch Santa's progress via NORAD on Christmas Eve. The crazy thing is that the hype was justified: it is pure magic. There's lots of negative peanut gallery elsewhere in this thread; they are just wrong and totally missing the point of what this team and device have accomplished, which is delivering a genuinely novel experience out-of-the-box, for about $500, with both a reasonable selection of samples on launch day AND a proper Unity SDK with good examples. It's one of those rare crowdfunded projects that shipped exactly on time (!), the drivers work, and the support forum is full of helpful people who reply to questions in a timely manner. My only regret is that I didn't spring for the opportunity to buy a 15" for $2000 when I had the chance.
- kgwxd 8y ago
  Did you get the leap with it too? If so, do you think that's worth the extra $100?
  - peteforde 8y ago
    Coincidentally, I backed the Leap on Kickstarter back in 2011 or whenever it was, as well. They've updated the software but never [needed?] to release a v2 of their hardware. My reply on this is: it's a mixed bag, and while several of their launch demos indeed make use of Leap, I was somewhat surprised by the degree to which there seems to be an undercurrent of disdain for it in the Looking Glass ecosystem, which is still small enough to be a first-name basis kind of affair. (eg it's a perfect time to get in on something verified awesome) From my perspective as a Unity dev, getting the Leap integration working was the hardest part. In fact, if I'm honest, I gave up before succeeding. Here's the double-edged sword: apparently, getting 1:1 mapping between the Leap and whatever you're building is tricky... but kids freaking love it. So, if you're looking to get young people excited or planning to build something that only makes sense with a Leap, then sure... go for it. However, it's tiring to use for long periods and I find only half-good at continuously tracking fingers. Good news is that there's apparently SDK support coming for depth cameras which could go a long way towards replacing the need for the Leap in the ecosystem. It seems like the hard thing which Leap figured out was the identification of fingers and gesture tracking. There's lots of devices out there which can do cool depth or time-of-flight sensing, but you still have to process a stream and make sense of it in near-realtime. So for a $100 gadget that does a 70% good job of this without a lot of coding smarts required, Leap was ahead of its time. Sorry, I know this was a bit all over the place and I sound like I'm waffling. Perhaps it comes down to a combination of "is $100 a big deal to you?" + "do you imagine building apps that rely on gesture control?" + "are you patient when it comes to iterative troubleshooting and integration in Unity?"
bane 8y ago
In case anybody is interested, this video recording of a demoscene production on one does a pretty good job of showing how it looks. http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=78756 http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=78756 I've seen one in real life and the left-right 3d is great, and in many cases it looks like there's a solid, low-res object floating inside the box. There's no up-down movement, but its surprisingly effective.
- AndrewKemendo 8y ago
  The website UI behind your URL is maddeningly hard to navigate if you're looking for the content. I wasn't even sure what this website was for, but it pointed me in the direction of understanding what the demoscene is [1]. If anyone wants the link to the content, it's here: https://youtu.be/US7hzM0a21E https://youtu.be/US7hzM0a21E [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene
joantune 8y ago
That's not holography, period. Let's call things by their names. They do not build an interference pattern which models the light waves as the object was there.. though that kind of technology isn't that far away. As someone who used to do holograms, I was quite excited to read the headlines - but once you read more into it - you see that it's just a trick, 'gimmick' even if it works well - it's not pure holography, so, please, don't use that name.

223 points by kgwxd 8y ago

The only thing that was negatively conveyed in the video, is that it was apparent that the FOV on the device is narrow... At one point, the camera shifted and you could see the image in the device fade out... Also - it seems the viewing angle is fairly specific? What would these look like mounted to a wall, perpendicular to the floor? Are they usable? Whats the limiting factor on size?

sp332 8y ago
It's 45 views across a total of 50 degrees, that's 25 degrees off-center left and right. And there's only a single vertical angle. What gets displayed in those views is 100% implementation-dependent. There's no standard for how "deep" the objects should look, and there's no standard for the vertical angle either. So whether it will look good on a wall is content-dependent. I suspect that most content being made specifically for the Looking Glass will have a downward viewing angle in mind, as would be natural for having the device on a desk in front of you.
- clort 8y ago
  One of the other commenters suggests that it is displaying onto several layers of glass inside the block; I didn't watch the video but I wonder if the surfaces that it is displaying on could be curved in addition to this within the block, so that the image has a wider field of view..
  - ARothfusz 8y ago
    It is not displaying on layers in the block. I have a 15" LookingGlass. The depth appears continuous, not in discrete layers. The field of view is, to me, very wide. I'm not trying to show it to an audience and it is more than enough to immerse me. It is also important to note that the field of view comes with parallax: you can really see around corners. It is not just a wide field of view on the same stereo pair.
    - VikingCoder 8y ago
      It's NOT layers in the block? What happens if you move your head up and down relative to it (vertical angles), does the object not get vertical parallax?
      - sp332 8y ago
        It's definitely not on layers. There's a weird perspective illusion vertically but it's not parallax and you can't "see around corners" vertically. It's a lenticular effect, horizontal only. Check out the Vimeo holographic channel: https://vimeo.com/channels/thelookingglass https://vimeo.com/channels/thelookingglass Each video is a 5x9 matrix and each view is a different angle. If you're working with a 3D object and not a video it's the same deal - it has to be rendered from 45 different perspectives and these are sent to the device separately.
        VikingCoder 8y ago
        It's 5x9, but that's just how it's stored, right? The actual data comes from a linear array of 45 cameras, right? Or is it a curved array of 45 cameras along an arc?
        sp332 8y ago
        Right, I think a linear array would work best since it matches where your eyes will be when you move left & right in front of the screen. https://lookingglassfactory.com/how-it-works/ https://lookingglassfactory.com/how-it-works/ It shows up on HDMI as 2560x1600 but I don't know how the physical panel is laid out.
      - ARothfusz 8y ago
        There is no vertical parallax, just horizontal.
    - samstave 8y ago
      Could you ostensibly have a giant wall of this and make it a virtual 3D aquarium? Seems so... A sni[ing game would be fun - with a foxhole view where you can move behind occlusions and shoot at small things far in the distance... The feel is that of a periscope's view though...

chasing 8y ago

The effect is really cool -- I've seen these in person. It's like a really well-done, high-resolution take on those lenticular plastic 3D images. It does look truly volumetric as long as you're kind of roughly in front of it. But if you go too far off to the side the effect breaks down a bit. Inexpensive 3D displays that don't require eye-tracking a la the Nintendo 3DS would be quite a nifty development.

petermcneeley 8y ago
I did my own version of the lenticular 3D this as hobby project. You need quite a high resolution (density) display. You also need to configure the output very accurately so that it corresponds to the final desired image for each eye. Because of how an LCD displays color you this is an even more complex translation. However the advantage of eyetracked lenticular over "The looking glass" would be resolution. (there might be other FOV and effect distance advantages as well)
- darkmighty 8y ago
  With lenticular arrays you don't even need eye tracking (in theory), since you can directly synthesize a geometric light field (that is, a bundle of rays around each point with different colors for every direction), but you'd probably need quite a few pixels per lens. If the lenses are <1mm diameter, and you need say >10x10 pixels per lens, that's at least 100ppcm, or >250ppi, preferably a lot more. Latest phones do seem to reach that level. In the end the satisfaction level needs to be evaluated experimentally of course, I wonder how nice one would be with current technology (say, an iPad Pro display), did you build a prototype?
  - petermcneeley 8y ago
    Yes I built a prototype. You can order lenticular sheets online. I have an iPad Pro but the distance between the LCD to the screen surface is too great to use normal lenicular sheets. A 4k small laptop screen would likely be enough for clean binocular separation however I only had a 1080p 10inch display. While this is difficult at the hobby level this already seems to be widely commercially available http://www.alioscopy.com/en/3Ddisplays.php http://www.alioscopy.com/en/3Ddisplays.php

kgwxd 8y ago

I found this through the Voxatron [1] blog [2]. Looks like they support it now. I think a setup like that would really hype kids up to design and program. [1] https://lexaloffle.com/voxatron.php https://lexaloffle.com/voxatron.php [2] https://lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=32743 https://lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=32743

aquova 8y ago
This was my first exposure to it as well, I follow the developer of Voxatron/Pico-8 on Twitter and they were posting videos of it in action a few months ago [1]. Voxatron got an update recently that is beginning to show a lot of promise, but it's still a bit incomplete to make anything more than neat visual scripts or basic drag-and-drop games. However, I would be very excited to see the platform develop further, and to try out a Looking Glass for myself (they're far too rich for my blood for the time being). [1] https://twitter.com/lexaloffle/status/1027606480030117890 https://twitter.com/lexaloffle/status/1027606480030117890
- mhb 8y ago
  far too rich for my blood I thought $400 was surprisingly reasonable.
  - kgwxd 8y ago
    $499 (let's say $500 to avoid the mental rounding down bias), +$100 if you want the Leap Motion, +$25 tax, + $50 shipping. My cart is at $673.92 USD. Having a hard time clicking "Checkout", but I'm not leaving the site yet :) Still seems reasonable in my opinion.

ericskiff 8y ago

I've seen this thing in real life and it's astounding. In the early versions, it was clear that the magic was happening by projecting slices onto the surface of multiple sheets of plexiglass. In this production version, the glass is 100% transparent, and the slices of image appear to be a seamless 3D whole. Aside from the fact that it's not in open air, it's just like looking at a real hologram. As you move your head, you're seeing a different point of view, and the object looks like it is really inside that block of glass moving around. I don't think I've seen any consumer gadget that seems so thoroughly from the future in the last 10 years.

sp332 8y ago
I have one of these and it's a very cool effect. Looking at a single image, the resolution seems impossibly low. But as VR developers discovered, getting the brain to accept an image is much more dependent on the "solidity" of the image than on the resolution or texture detail, and this device nails that. Plus with a moving image, your brain is good at integrating texture information over time and your experience will feel merely "grainy" and not super blocky.
calhoun137 8y ago
> Aside from the fact that it's not in open air I once put a lot of work into researching how to build an "open air" 3d hologram like they have in the movies and came to the conclusion that it is basically against the laws of physics. This is because its impossible to bend light beams in free space. There are however a lot of cool tricks and hacks, 3d holograms are a really cool subject, this Looking Glass product looks fantastic I want one. One of the biggest problems these kinds of holograms in a box have is, even though horizontal scrolling works fine, being able to look at it from the top and bottom does not. Here [1] is a video of a 3d hologram in a box based on a rotating mirror that has a head tracker for viewing from different vertical angles. It's really cool but the thing rotates so fast it's also extremely dangerous. Another approach for open air 3d holograms is to create a series of small explosions that emit light by shooting dangerous high powered lasers into the air and using plasma emission. See [2] Finally here is a cool video of some fan based holograms [3] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gvPS1m40gw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gvPS1m40gw [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfVS-npfVuY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfVS-npfVuY [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wjvq0SNczrI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wjvq0SNczrI

LyalinDotCom 8y ago

their website seems down (maybe thanks to HN?) but there are videos of this you can check out on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=looking+glass+holographic+display https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=looking+glass+h...

enjrolas 8y ago
working on this now, thanks HN :)
- enjrolas 8y ago
  Aaaand we're back

proee 8y ago

Reminds me of the video game way back in the 90's called "Time Traveler". This was in the expensive section of the arcade and cost around a dollar to play - a huge premium over the nickel machines. My brothers and I finally decided to pooled our money together to play the machine - the gameplay was weak but the visuals were cool! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Traveler_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Traveler_(video_game)

michaelchisari 8y ago
If I remember correctly, the gameplay was similar to Dragon's Lair: Cool to watch, infuriating to play.

nkg 8y ago

It looks really cool, but makes me want a real cube that you would be able to walk around and see every angle of your 3D model.

aerovistae 8y ago

Slightly funny that the makers of one of the most cutting edge display technologies in the world have an absolutely atrociously designed website.

partiallypro 8y ago
How is it poorly designed? It looks like every other website, it sort of resembles theverge.com. Not a fan of the bold font, but otherwise it looks no different than any other major site.

joering2 8y ago

Amazingly looking.. but haven't we been there before? JooJoo tablet? Anyone remembers it? Then Apple came with iPad and JJ disappeared. What's the chances one of XX Apple future tech Skunkworks teams are NOT working on something similar with billions of dollars in R&D founds?

tostitos1979 8y ago

Is this pepper's ghost, or something different?

Ruthalas 8y ago
The display volume is made up of layers of refractive material, and the software generates 45 perspectives of the displayed model, which are refracted to the appropriate viewing angles. [1] Their website terms it a, "...lightfield display with volumetric characteristics". [2] [1] https://youtu.be/sWevv3zotXY https://youtu.be/sWevv3zotXY [2] https://lookingglassfactory.com/how-it-works/ https://lookingglassfactory.com/how-it-works/

Feneric 8y ago

How well does it work with Linux? I didn't see anything about it on the site. It'd be neat to hook up to my laptop, but if Linux isn't supported at all there'd be no point.

kelvin0 8y ago
OK, so the fact that it isn't (yet) supported by Linux completely invalidates the concept? I've heard of Linux zealots, but this is something else..
- aetios 8y ago
  I think he means there's no point hooking it up to Linux if there is no support :)
bacon_waffle 8y ago
Mine should be arriving tomorrow or Monday, I'm intending to try and use it with Linux. From what I can tell, the display more-or-less presents as a normal 2d monitor which expects a tiled grid of views that differ in azimuth: have a look at https://vimeo.com/lookingglassfactory https://vimeo.com/lookingglassfactory
- bacon_waffle 8y ago
  Correction - the views are interleaved, and the details of that interleaving depend on the calibration of your individual Looking Glass. https://github.com/lonetech/LookingGlass https://github.com/lonetech/LookingGlass has a Python tool that grabs the calibration out of the looking glass, and an OpenGL shader that can be used with MPlayer to take the tiled videos from the vimeo link and display them on the LG. It's a really cool effect in person - I'm totally glad I sprung for one!

beezischillin 8y ago

Could you theoretically run a game like Trials from Ubisoft on something like this? From what I understand of the technology it would be like an ideal use case for it. Seems like an amazing experience at least in theory.

zik 8y ago

This isn't actually "holographic" as such. Holography [1] specifically refers to creating a 3d effect by recording light diffraction and interference wavefronts. At this point though the term has become so corrupted that most people think that holography means any kind of 3d display without glasses - which is definitely not what holography is. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holography

Aeolun 8y ago
If everyone thinks that’s what Holography means, then for most intents and purposes, that’s pretty much what it means.
- gcbw2 8y ago
  I can't say if it is a clever pun that you made up the meaning of the word "everyone" to exclude the author of the post you replied to.
  - deleted 8y ago
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pndy 8y ago
I'm pretty sure the last time we had here thread about The Looking Glass, someone said it's actually a volumetric display which has nothing to do with holograms beside marketing gimmick which tries to sell it as such display and technology

peteforde 8y ago

I was a Kickstarter backer, and have been developing experiments on it nearly full-time since it arrived about a week before Christmas. It was, amusingly, the first time I've tracked a package minute-to-minute since we used to watch Santa's progress via NORAD on Christmas Eve. The crazy thing is that the hype was justified: it is pure magic. There's lots of negative peanut gallery elsewhere in this thread; they are just wrong and totally missing the point of what this team and device have accomplished, which is delivering a genuinely novel experience out-of-the-box, for about $500, with both a reasonable selection of samples on launch day AND a proper Unity SDK with good examples. It's one of those rare crowdfunded projects that shipped exactly on time (!), the drivers work, and the support forum is full of helpful people who reply to questions in a timely manner. My only regret is that I didn't spring for the opportunity to buy a 15" for $2000 when I had the chance.

kgwxd 8y ago
Did you get the leap with it too? If so, do you think that's worth the extra $100?
- peteforde 8y ago
  Coincidentally, I backed the Leap on Kickstarter back in 2011 or whenever it was, as well. They've updated the software but never [needed?] to release a v2 of their hardware. My reply on this is: it's a mixed bag, and while several of their launch demos indeed make use of Leap, I was somewhat surprised by the degree to which there seems to be an undercurrent of disdain for it in the Looking Glass ecosystem, which is still small enough to be a first-name basis kind of affair. (eg it's a perfect time to get in on something verified awesome) From my perspective as a Unity dev, getting the Leap integration working was the hardest part. In fact, if I'm honest, I gave up before succeeding. Here's the double-edged sword: apparently, getting 1:1 mapping between the Leap and whatever you're building is tricky... but kids freaking love it. So, if you're looking to get young people excited or planning to build something that only makes sense with a Leap, then sure... go for it. However, it's tiring to use for long periods and I find only half-good at continuously tracking fingers. Good news is that there's apparently SDK support coming for depth cameras which could go a long way towards replacing the need for the Leap in the ecosystem. It seems like the hard thing which Leap figured out was the identification of fingers and gesture tracking. There's lots of devices out there which can do cool depth or time-of-flight sensing, but you still have to process a stream and make sense of it in near-realtime. So for a $100 gadget that does a 70% good job of this without a lot of coding smarts required, Leap was ahead of its time. Sorry, I know this was a bit all over the place and I sound like I'm waffling. Perhaps it comes down to a combination of "is $100 a big deal to you?" + "do you imagine building apps that rely on gesture control?" + "are you patient when it comes to iterative troubleshooting and integration in Unity?"

bane 8y ago

In case anybody is interested, this video recording of a demoscene production on one does a pretty good job of showing how it looks. http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=78756 http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=78756 I've seen one in real life and the left-right 3d is great, and in many cases it looks like there's a solid, low-res object floating inside the box. There's no up-down movement, but its surprisingly effective.

AndrewKemendo 8y ago
The website UI behind your URL is maddeningly hard to navigate if you're looking for the content. I wasn't even sure what this website was for, but it pointed me in the direction of understanding what the demoscene is [1]. If anyone wants the link to the content, it's here: https://youtu.be/US7hzM0a21E https://youtu.be/US7hzM0a21E [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene

joantune 8y ago

That's not holography, period. Let's call things by their names. They do not build an interference pattern which models the light waves as the object was there.. though that kind of technology isn't that far away. As someone who used to do holograms, I was quite excited to read the headlines - but once you read more into it - you see that it's just a trick, 'gimmick' even if it works well - it's not pure holography, so, please, don't use that name.