8 ms·

This is what Doom looks like on a holographic display

196 points by ttflee 5y ago

teekert 5y ago
Cool, but, it looks exactly like watching a display with a Wii remote on your head [0, 2007]. What’s so special? Is it actually 3D this time? [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw
- runawaybottle 5y ago
  Well, if it’s as simple as head tracking with a IR emitter on your headphones or the like, then I’m a little surprised first person shooters don’t enable peeking around corners with head motion.
  - xwolfi 5y ago
    It doesn't seen to be, or rotating the thing with a fixed camera wouldn't produce the effect, I guess ? https://lookingglassfactory.com/tech https://lookingglassfactory.com/tech
- mnw21cam 5y ago
  I'm just going to link https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/rainbow/research/autostereo.html https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/rainbow/research/autostere... here - an autostereo display that was working way earlier than that. "The first displays were built in the late 1980s and early 1990s". They worked by projecting different images out to different horizontal areas in front of them, so your right and left eyes would see a different image, you could move your head and see around objects, and multiple people could look at it and see an appropriate view for their position. Not sure if they ever ran Doom on it though.
- detaro 5y ago
  > What’s so special? That it's not based on head tracking, and in a product you'll be able to reasonably buy.
- mattowen_uk 5y ago
  > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw I did this at the time. I downloaded his Wii app that shows the little red/white discs, and bought a battery powered Wii-bar thing that had the IR leds in it and strapped it to my head. Can confirm, the 3D effect is 100% spot on, even the smallest move of your head caused the display to adjust perspective and your brain is totally fooled into thinking the Wii display is a just a window into a 3D scene. tbh, it was the only cool thing I actually did with my Wii!
  - SirHound 5y ago
    Surely the depth effect only worked with one eye closed?
    - wffurr 5y ago
      Nope, works with both eyes. Your brain takes a lot more cues for depth than stereoscopic vision. The way the perspective changes as you move your head around is sufficient even for a flat display. It’s uncanny. Only works for one person though. If you stand at an off angle to the sensors, there’s no effect at all.
      - RHSeeger 5y ago
        Its amazing how the brain works... I am very cross-eyed at the moment (surgery resulted in both my eyeballs moving) and require a little plastic "stickon" that goes on the left lens of my glasses; which has prisms to redirect the light so that both eyes are looking in the same direction (prisms are fairly normal; it's the _amount_ of correction I need that is abnormal). The correction on the left lens is so bad that looking through it is completely blurry (with lots of rainbows if I'm looking towards a light). However, when looking through my glasses with both eyes, everything appears normal. I can see in stereo (which I cannot do w/o the correction) and everything is in focus. There is still _some_ rainbow effect. So, my brain is taking the "clear image" from my right eye and overlaying it with the distance information that the left eye adds to that... but ignoring the blurry image from the left eye completely. Honestly, I find it mind boggling.
- Jemm 5y ago
  TrackIR and variants are quite popular for simulator type games like flight simulator or truck simulator. They let you look around in the game just by moving your head.
  - dividuum 5y ago
    Hm. I haven't really looked too deep into TrackIR, but I always thought it tracked your head movement to simulate head rotation within the game. So you could look around more naturally. The linked Wii "tracking" demo used the tracking to find your position relative to the display to change the rendered perspective accordingly. Does TrackIR also allow this?
    - winthrowe 5y ago
      As a TrackIR user, it feels to me like it should be possible to do something like this with the 6dof headtracking data from TrackIR, but basically nobody uses a 1-1 mapping that would produce a camera trick like this.
      - mrguyorama 5y ago
        TrackIR DOES do this. In flight simulator, with full 6dof, you can move your virtual head around and look under and around things
        winthrowe 5y ago
        In my TrackIR config, I move my head left an inch, the projected head moves 6 inches. This is more useful than a even mapping in practice, but solidly breaks the 'looking through a window' illusion.
- jcelerier 5y ago
  with an holographic display two persons looking from different angles would see the image corresponding to their angle
  - mdip 5y ago
    I think that sums it up pretty perfectly. It's the single reason I watched the video and my first thought was "there's no way that works that well" From the comments, here, it sounds like it might. There's some interesting applications, here. Thinking back to last night, it would have been really nice if when I was looking at the split-screen in my driving game with my kids, my own corner had that kind of depth to it. Hell, driving/flying games, in general, suffer from realism issues due to not being able to faithfully produce the effect of looking out a window. Doing this on a larger screen (and throw in a transparent LCD after you work out how to bend all of this into that, assuming it can be done) and you could have a light-switch that changes the scenery from "outside" to "outside somewhere else"[0]. [0] I remember seeing that in Back to the Future II as a kid and thinking it'd be really nice to have on a cold, gloomy, February day in Michigan.
0-_-0 5y ago
Cool, but it's not using the correct FOV to make sure the viewer/eye is at the focal point. That would look way cooler, I've seen a demo like that before. You get the impression you're looking through a window to another world. Edit: the video linked here by teekert does it correctly
elyobo 5y ago
> This is not available to you ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- tumetab1 5y ago
  That's a twitter bug/feature that requires one or more browsers refreshes to find and show a tweet.
  - MaxBarraclough 5y ago
    This seems to happen a lot. Not the first time I've seen this crop up in an HN thread.
  - elyobo 5y ago
    Thanks, not one I'd encountered.
    - Black101 5y ago
      Probably happened at least 20 times to me... the first time was probably a year ago...
      - isoskeles 5y ago
        I’ve always wondered why it happens. Best guess is they have a short timeout like 1s to retrieve that content.
alvarlagerlof 5y ago
I wish people would stop calling these holographic
- forgotpwd16 5y ago
  Why?
  - f6v 5y ago
    I guess that’s not how people imagine holograms based on sci-fi.
  - mnw21cam 5y ago
    Because they aren't holograms. A hologram is "a recording of an interference pattern which uses diffraction to reproduce a 3D light field" [0]. This is something completely different. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holography
  - chmod775 5y ago
    Because it's a lenticular screen.
monsieurbanana 5y ago
This is... way cheaper than I thought it would be at $250(pre-order price?). But I don't understand how it works. Seems like... head/hand tracking? But then why the weird-looking screen? A bit disappointed, at first I thought it was something similar to those cards we had when we were kids, that change image depending on which angle you look at them (forgot the name). Edit: seems like it's a bit of both: https://docs.lookingglassfactory.com/KeyConcepts/how-it-works/ https://docs.lookingglassfactory.com/KeyConcepts/how-it-work... Edit2: Okay so it does work like the cards we had when we were kids. The screen shows 45 different views of the scene at once. I'm back at being non-disappointed.
- frankenst1 5y ago
  The display shown in the video is the 15.6" display which costs $3,000 (https://lookingglassfactory.com/product/15-6 https://lookingglassfactory.com/product/15-6).
  - monsieurbanana 5y ago
    ... Ah.
  - gaudat 5y ago
    It takes probably less than $300 to DIY this from a off-the-shelf 15.6" display and a piece of dot lenticular sheet...
    - andybak 5y ago
      Which would look entirely different.
      - monsieurbanana 5y ago
        Me: Mom can we have Dropbox? Mom: We have Dropbox at home Dropbox at home: ftp + curlftpfs + svn
        5y ago
icegreentea2 5y ago
Like other people have said, this looks like a Looking Glass dev unit or something. And here's a Linus Tech Tips video of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EA2FQXs4dw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EA2FQXs4dw They have some good footage (though obviously it's setup as a hype reel too). Edit: Skip to follow for "beauty shots": 4:45 and 8:50. 6:12 for funky shot of the 'flattened' image to give you a sense of what 'trick' they're playing
boboche 5y ago
This is autostereoscopic, not holographic. It is however really nice, 10 yrs ago we were playing Quake on a WowVx display from Phillips when not working on autostereoscopic digital signage content. Phillips stopped with as3d and spun off Dimenco which are also selling As3d products, newsight, tridelity, and a few others are around... but all of this is NOT holography. Its high res display with a lenticular sheet splitting viewpoints.
- mdip 5y ago
  Thanks for the info -- I had assumed this was the case[0]. When I looked at the animations/video, I thought it was really slick and as I read more about the tech it appeared to be as I expected, but I'm not sure if I should be disappointed by that. I think it was quite intelligent for the company to offer a smaller, relatively inexpensive ($249 early-bird isn't bad) display because I fully expect it'll be impossible to properly evaluate the quality of the tech without actually seeing it live. The few times I've played with some of the more exotic screens (even oddball LCD screens like the promising, but brief IGZO LCD panels) are very difficult to evaluate. The videos are usually far from what it looks like in-person (and I'd wager about 75% of the time, the video makes displays look worse than it is). I'm curious if you can speak to the down-sides of doing things this way. Were this screen a "real holographic display" but with the similar constraints[1], would it be substantially better? From the videos, I get the impression that this screen can only display 3D within the bounds of the "box", so if a real holographic display behaved similarly, what could it do that an autostereoscopic screen cannot? I'm curious because I was left behind during the 3D craze (that disappeared, as I predicted, a few years later). I can handle about 30 minutes of 3D-glasses before I start getting the early symptoms of Migraine. I was hopeful when the TVs came out that I might be able to watch Avatar[2], finally, but I tried various sets with different types of 3D glasses (active/passive, I recall?) and they felt more uncomfortable than at the theaters[3]. I've never been diagnosed with lazy eyes/other eye problems, but I feel like my eyes go cross-eyed with the glasses on. I'd have to see this, physically, to be comfortable with buying it. At the price-point of their smaller option, that's getting pretty close, though. If they had a very convenient/complete return policy, I'd probably check it out. [0] That's not to diminish the value of the comment, I had only assumed it was some form of "Glasses-free 3D", but know nothing about the tech or how it works. [1] As in, the dream is a "projector like" screen where a hologram could just be displayed in an arbitrary location in a room, is out. [2] I have not seen it, yet. When it had finally died down in theatres, I had read that the story was "not very interesting/creative" and "kind of dumb". This was supported by the fact that everyone I know who went to see it told me nothing about what the movie was about and not one of them mentioned anything they liked about the "story". I think the best summary I received was from a close friend who said "I left the theater and 'the world' seemed a little less real" and I was interested to see the result of this camera that was invented for the purpose of filming that movie, but I haven't seen a second of it, yet. [3] I thought it was normal to feel "off". I call it "almost dizzy" because I don't feel off balance, it just feels like it takes an amazing amount of effort to pinpoint objects with my eyes -- screen or otherwise -- with any kind of 3D glasses on. I wear a very low prescription pair of glasses (not required for driving, I'm nearly 20/20) and other than really cheap sunglasses, I generally have no difficulties otherwise.
ekianjo 5y ago
Cool but technically looking glass is not an holographic display.
- bredren 5y ago
  Neither was Time Traveller, but it was also cool. So far “holographic” seems to describe the experience of the viewer more than a technical spec. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Traveler_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Traveler_(video_game)
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
supermatt 5y ago
i love these displays, but the smaller one feels too small for anything other than a photo-frame, and the large(r) one is CRAZY expensive (and still too small...)
Black101 5y ago
The next wall hackers
- mdip 5y ago
  Every hacker's basement[0] (with enough money) is going to be walls of these. Can't wait for the first take on a holodeck[1] [0] Garage/shed/lab [1] Not implying this would come even close, especially not being a "true hologram", but it'd still be the closest we could probably get with current tech outside of headgear.
hesdeadjim 5y ago
I've built a non-trivial prototype application for the Looking Glass, and once you are past the initial 'cool' moment the downsides start to rear their head: - Split a 4k signal into 45 view planes means the effective resolution sucks, bad. - Likewise, if your content is complicated at all you need a monster GPU because you are rendering your scenes 45 times per frame, meaning 45 times the draw calls. - Field of view is very limited - The amount of z-depth you can put content in without major blurring is much lower than even this video would indicate. - You need to design your scene so important content never reaches the edges or things look yuck. - Some patterns lead to artifacts like moire, and it can be hard to predict. Your content needs to work around this. - They are (understandably) very expensive. All that said, these things are cool and would be a perfect fit for some use-cases. After the prototype I built was green lit for full production, the decision was made to ditch these displays for all the reasons above.
- deanCommie 5y ago
  Uninformed outsider coming in with questions: 1) Isn't this just based on "naive" implementations? Surely there are optimizations to not have to render all 45 view planes at all times similar to how 3d rendering doesn't render scenes that are not visible until the character moves to change perspective? 2) The difficulty with layout and design doesn't seem that different from any 3d or game design challenges to make sure the person can't see the wizardry behind the curtain. Is it? I guess what i'm thinking is if you take an Introduction to Computer Graphics course, you can learn all the math, all the concepts, and all the abstract ideas about building 3D worlds. Then you try to implement them and you immediately realize that none of the ideas are performant enough to actually put into practice in a video game without MAJOR optimizations that on the surface seem 1/ Hacky, 2/ Extraordinarily difficult. We've been doing a range of them for 30 years. But some are only TODAY entering the mainstream despite being the simplest possible concept to explain to a student (ray tracing). Is it not the same situation with these kinds of displays (and other VR/AR)? We're in the super early stages and we need the John Carmack equivalents to identify all the super insanely clever optimizations to squeeze something practical out of them?
  - toast0 5y ago
tito 5y ago
Incredible stuff! I first saw Looking Glass Factory [0] at Maker Faire in San Mateo around 2016. It was simple back then, probably 64 x 64 pixels "display". Imagine a bamboo garden made of 64 LED strips standing up, about 3'x3'x3' cube. Playing screensaver type light displays, entertaining at low res. Then I saw a more recent version at a coffee shop in Providence. They're up to legit resolution now, and as a poster said, the light is split so all you're doing is moving your head. No head tracking/whatever. It's one of those things that's tough to "get" without seeing yourself. Feels like a definitive piece of the future. I joined their Kickstarter awhile back as well. Go Looking Glass crew! [0] https://lookingglassfactory.com/ https://lookingglassfactory.com/

196 points by ttflee 5y ago

Cool, but, it looks exactly like watching a display with a Wii remote on your head [0, 2007]. What’s so special? Is it actually 3D this time? [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw

runawaybottle 5y ago
Well, if it’s as simple as head tracking with a IR emitter on your headphones or the like, then I’m a little surprised first person shooters don’t enable peeking around corners with head motion.
- xwolfi 5y ago
  It doesn't seen to be, or rotating the thing with a fixed camera wouldn't produce the effect, I guess ? https://lookingglassfactory.com/tech https://lookingglassfactory.com/tech
mnw21cam 5y ago
I'm just going to link https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/rainbow/research/autostereo.html https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/rainbow/research/autostere... here - an autostereo display that was working way earlier than that. "The first displays were built in the late 1980s and early 1990s". They worked by projecting different images out to different horizontal areas in front of them, so your right and left eyes would see a different image, you could move your head and see around objects, and multiple people could look at it and see an appropriate view for their position. Not sure if they ever ran Doom on it though.
detaro 5y ago
> What’s so special? That it's not based on head tracking, and in a product you'll be able to reasonably buy.
mattowen_uk 5y ago
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw I did this at the time. I downloaded his Wii app that shows the little red/white discs, and bought a battery powered Wii-bar thing that had the IR leds in it and strapped it to my head. Can confirm, the 3D effect is 100% spot on, even the smallest move of your head caused the display to adjust perspective and your brain is totally fooled into thinking the Wii display is a just a window into a 3D scene. tbh, it was the only cool thing I actually did with my Wii!
- SirHound 5y ago
  Surely the depth effect only worked with one eye closed?
  - wffurr 5y ago
    Nope, works with both eyes. Your brain takes a lot more cues for depth than stereoscopic vision. The way the perspective changes as you move your head around is sufficient even for a flat display. It’s uncanny. Only works for one person though. If you stand at an off angle to the sensors, there’s no effect at all.
    - RHSeeger 5y ago
      Its amazing how the brain works... I am very cross-eyed at the moment (surgery resulted in both my eyeballs moving) and require a little plastic "stickon" that goes on the left lens of my glasses; which has prisms to redirect the light so that both eyes are looking in the same direction (prisms are fairly normal; it's the _amount_ of correction I need that is abnormal). The correction on the left lens is so bad that looking through it is completely blurry (with lots of rainbows if I'm looking towards a light). However, when looking through my glasses with both eyes, everything appears normal. I can see in stereo (which I cannot do w/o the correction) and everything is in focus. There is still _some_ rainbow effect. So, my brain is taking the "clear image" from my right eye and overlaying it with the distance information that the left eye adds to that... but ignoring the blurry image from the left eye completely. Honestly, I find it mind boggling.
Jemm 5y ago
TrackIR and variants are quite popular for simulator type games like flight simulator or truck simulator. They let you look around in the game just by moving your head.
- dividuum 5y ago
  Hm. I haven't really looked too deep into TrackIR, but I always thought it tracked your head movement to simulate head rotation within the game. So you could look around more naturally. The linked Wii "tracking" demo used the tracking to find your position relative to the display to change the rendered perspective accordingly. Does TrackIR also allow this?
  - winthrowe 5y ago
    As a TrackIR user, it feels to me like it should be possible to do something like this with the 6dof headtracking data from TrackIR, but basically nobody uses a 1-1 mapping that would produce a camera trick like this.
    - mrguyorama 5y ago
      TrackIR DOES do this. In flight simulator, with full 6dof, you can move your virtual head around and look under and around things
      - winthrowe 5y ago
        In my TrackIR config, I move my head left an inch, the projected head moves 6 inches. This is more useful than a even mapping in practice, but solidly breaks the 'looking through a window' illusion.
jcelerier 5y ago
with an holographic display two persons looking from different angles would see the image corresponding to their angle
- mdip 5y ago
  I think that sums it up pretty perfectly. It's the single reason I watched the video and my first thought was "there's no way that works that well" From the comments, here, it sounds like it might. There's some interesting applications, here. Thinking back to last night, it would have been really nice if when I was looking at the split-screen in my driving game with my kids, my own corner had that kind of depth to it. Hell, driving/flying games, in general, suffer from realism issues due to not being able to faithfully produce the effect of looking out a window. Doing this on a larger screen (and throw in a transparent LCD after you work out how to bend all of this into that, assuming it can be done) and you could have a light-switch that changes the scenery from "outside" to "outside somewhere else"[0]. [0] I remember seeing that in Back to the Future II as a kid and thinking it'd be really nice to have on a cold, gloomy, February day in Michigan.

0-_-0 5y ago

Cool, but it's not using the correct FOV to make sure the viewer/eye is at the focal point. That would look way cooler, I've seen a demo like that before. You get the impression you're looking through a window to another world. Edit: the video linked here by teekert does it correctly

elyobo 5y ago

> This is not available to you ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

tumetab1 5y ago
That's a twitter bug/feature that requires one or more browsers refreshes to find and show a tweet.
- MaxBarraclough 5y ago
  This seems to happen a lot. Not the first time I've seen this crop up in an HN thread.
- elyobo 5y ago
  Thanks, not one I'd encountered.
  - Black101 5y ago
    Probably happened at least 20 times to me... the first time was probably a year ago...
    - isoskeles 5y ago
      I’ve always wondered why it happens. Best guess is they have a short timeout like 1s to retrieve that content.

alvarlagerlof 5y ago

I wish people would stop calling these holographic

forgotpwd16 5y ago
Why?
- f6v 5y ago
  I guess that’s not how people imagine holograms based on sci-fi.
- mnw21cam 5y ago
  Because they aren't holograms. A hologram is "a recording of an interference pattern which uses diffraction to reproduce a 3D light field" [0]. This is something completely different. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holography
- chmod775 5y ago
  Because it's a lenticular screen.

monsieurbanana 5y ago

This is... way cheaper than I thought it would be at $250(pre-order price?). But I don't understand how it works. Seems like... head/hand tracking? But then why the weird-looking screen? A bit disappointed, at first I thought it was something similar to those cards we had when we were kids, that change image depending on which angle you look at them (forgot the name). Edit: seems like it's a bit of both: https://docs.lookingglassfactory.com/KeyConcepts/how-it-works/ https://docs.lookingglassfactory.com/KeyConcepts/how-it-work... Edit2: Okay so it does work like the cards we had when we were kids. The screen shows 45 different views of the scene at once. I'm back at being non-disappointed.

frankenst1 5y ago
The display shown in the video is the 15.6" display which costs $3,000 (https://lookingglassfactory.com/product/15-6 https://lookingglassfactory.com/product/15-6).
- monsieurbanana 5y ago
  ... Ah.
- gaudat 5y ago
  It takes probably less than $300 to DIY this from a off-the-shelf 15.6" display and a piece of dot lenticular sheet...
  - andybak 5y ago
    Which would look entirely different.
    - monsieurbanana 5y ago
      Me: Mom can we have Dropbox? Mom: We have Dropbox at home Dropbox at home: ftp + curlftpfs + svn
      - 5y ago

icegreentea2 5y ago

Like other people have said, this looks like a Looking Glass dev unit or something. And here's a Linus Tech Tips video of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EA2FQXs4dw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EA2FQXs4dw They have some good footage (though obviously it's setup as a hype reel too). Edit: Skip to follow for "beauty shots": 4:45 and 8:50. 6:12 for funky shot of the 'flattened' image to give you a sense of what 'trick' they're playing

boboche 5y ago

This is autostereoscopic, not holographic. It is however really nice, 10 yrs ago we were playing Quake on a WowVx display from Phillips when not working on autostereoscopic digital signage content. Phillips stopped with as3d and spun off Dimenco which are also selling As3d products, newsight, tridelity, and a few others are around... but all of this is NOT holography. Its high res display with a lenticular sheet splitting viewpoints.

mdip 5y ago
Thanks for the info -- I had assumed this was the case[0]. When I looked at the animations/video, I thought it was really slick and as I read more about the tech it appeared to be as I expected, but I'm not sure if I should be disappointed by that. I think it was quite intelligent for the company to offer a smaller, relatively inexpensive ($249 early-bird isn't bad) display because I fully expect it'll be impossible to properly evaluate the quality of the tech without actually seeing it live. The few times I've played with some of the more exotic screens (even oddball LCD screens like the promising, but brief IGZO LCD panels) are very difficult to evaluate. The videos are usually far from what it looks like in-person (and I'd wager about 75% of the time, the video makes displays look worse than it is). I'm curious if you can speak to the down-sides of doing things this way. Were this screen a "real holographic display" but with the similar constraints[1], would it be substantially better? From the videos, I get the impression that this screen can only display 3D within the bounds of the "box", so if a real holographic display behaved similarly, what could it do that an autostereoscopic screen cannot? I'm curious because I was left behind during the 3D craze (that disappeared, as I predicted, a few years later). I can handle about 30 minutes of 3D-glasses before I start getting the early symptoms of Migraine. I was hopeful when the TVs came out that I might be able to watch Avatar[2], finally, but I tried various sets with different types of 3D glasses (active/passive, I recall?) and they felt more uncomfortable than at the theaters[3]. I've never been diagnosed with lazy eyes/other eye problems, but I feel like my eyes go cross-eyed with the glasses on. I'd have to see this, physically, to be comfortable with buying it. At the price-point of their smaller option, that's getting pretty close, though. If they had a very convenient/complete return policy, I'd probably check it out. [0] That's not to diminish the value of the comment, I had only assumed it was some form of "Glasses-free 3D", but know nothing about the tech or how it works. [1] As in, the dream is a "projector like" screen where a hologram could just be displayed in an arbitrary location in a room, is out. [2] I have not seen it, yet. When it had finally died down in theatres, I had read that the story was "not very interesting/creative" and "kind of dumb". This was supported by the fact that everyone I know who went to see it told me nothing about what the movie was about and not one of them mentioned anything they liked about the "story". I think the best summary I received was from a close friend who said "I left the theater and 'the world' seemed a little less real" and I was interested to see the result of this camera that was invented for the purpose of filming that movie, but I haven't seen a second of it, yet. [3] I thought it was normal to feel "off". I call it "almost dizzy" because I don't feel off balance, it just feels like it takes an amazing amount of effort to pinpoint objects with my eyes -- screen or otherwise -- with any kind of 3D glasses on. I wear a very low prescription pair of glasses (not required for driving, I'm nearly 20/20) and other than really cheap sunglasses, I generally have no difficulties otherwise.

ekianjo 5y ago

Cool but technically looking glass is not an holographic display.

bredren 5y ago
Neither was Time Traveller, but it was also cool. So far “holographic” seems to describe the experience of the viewer more than a technical spec. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Traveler_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Traveler_(video_game)

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

supermatt 5y ago

i love these displays, but the smaller one feels too small for anything other than a photo-frame, and the large(r) one is CRAZY expensive (and still too small...)

Black101 5y ago

The next wall hackers

mdip 5y ago
Every hacker's basement[0] (with enough money) is going to be walls of these. Can't wait for the first take on a holodeck[1] [0] Garage/shed/lab [1] Not implying this would come even close, especially not being a "true hologram", but it'd still be the closest we could probably get with current tech outside of headgear.

hesdeadjim 5y ago

I've built a non-trivial prototype application for the Looking Glass, and once you are past the initial 'cool' moment the downsides start to rear their head: - Split a 4k signal into 45 view planes means the effective resolution sucks, bad. - Likewise, if your content is complicated at all you need a monster GPU because you are rendering your scenes 45 times per frame, meaning 45 times the draw calls. - Field of view is very limited - The amount of z-depth you can put content in without major blurring is much lower than even this video would indicate. - You need to design your scene so important content never reaches the edges or things look yuck. - Some patterns lead to artifacts like moire, and it can be hard to predict. Your content needs to work around this. - They are (understandably) very expensive. All that said, these things are cool and would be a perfect fit for some use-cases. After the prototype I built was green lit for full production, the decision was made to ditch these displays for all the reasons above.

deanCommie 5y ago
Uninformed outsider coming in with questions: 1) Isn't this just based on "naive" implementations? Surely there are optimizations to not have to render all 45 view planes at all times similar to how 3d rendering doesn't render scenes that are not visible until the character moves to change perspective? 2) The difficulty with layout and design doesn't seem that different from any 3d or game design challenges to make sure the person can't see the wizardry behind the curtain. Is it? I guess what i'm thinking is if you take an Introduction to Computer Graphics course, you can learn all the math, all the concepts, and all the abstract ideas about building 3D worlds. Then you try to implement them and you immediately realize that none of the ideas are performant enough to actually put into practice in a video game without MAJOR optimizations that on the surface seem 1/ Hacky, 2/ Extraordinarily difficult. We've been doing a range of them for 30 years. But some are only TODAY entering the mainstream despite being the simplest possible concept to explain to a student (ray tracing). Is it not the same situation with these kinds of displays (and other VR/AR)? We're in the super early stages and we need the John Carmack equivalents to identify all the super insanely clever optimizations to squeeze something practical out of them?
- toast0 5y ago

tito 5y ago

Incredible stuff! I first saw Looking Glass Factory [0] at Maker Faire in San Mateo around 2016. It was simple back then, probably 64 x 64 pixels "display". Imagine a bamboo garden made of 64 LED strips standing up, about 3'x3'x3' cube. Playing screensaver type light displays, entertaining at low res. Then I saw a more recent version at a coffee shop in Providence. They're up to legit resolution now, and as a poster said, the light is split so all you're doing is moving your head. No head tracking/whatever. It's one of those things that's tough to "get" without seeing yourself. Feels like a definitive piece of the future. I joined their Kickstarter awhile back as well. Go Looking Glass crew! [0] https://lookingglassfactory.com/ https://lookingglassfactory.com/