Microsoft likes to think of its HoloLens mixed reality headset as projecting holograms into the real world, but these can only be seen by the person wearing the headset. Looking Glass Factory’s Holoplayer One is making holograms that everyone can see and interact with.
Holoplayer One is an interactive lightfield display. It consists of a device that unfolds from a shape similar to a laptop and projects a 3D image above a glass panel that anyone can use their hands to interact with. In the trailer below, for example, you can see it being used to create 3D art not dissimilar to VR applications like Google’s Tilt Brush, only in the real world.
Lightfield technology is an increasingly promising means of capturing real-world objects and scenes and digitizing them with realistic results. Over the past few years we’ve seen hugely promising work in this field from companies like Lytro that may one day deliver photorealistic VR. Holoplayer One, though, wants to share those results with everyone.
“Think of a lightfield as all the rays of light coming off of an object in three dimensions,” Looking Glass Factory CEO and cofounder Shawn Frayne told UploadVR in an email. “Our eyes are light sensors, not reality sensors, so if you could somehow recreate all of the rays of light coming off of a bunny and put all those rays in the middle of a room, everyone in the room would think that a soft, fluffy bunny is floating in the middle of the room — it would be visually indistinguishable from the real thing.
”With Holoplayer, you’ll get a full 3D image without the need for any special glasses or headsets. The projected image, first transmitted from an LCD screen, hovers above the box itself. The images presented has a resolution of 267-by-480 per view with 32 different views…
The post Holoplayer One’s interactive lightfield display brings 3D holograms to your living room appeared first on FeedBox.