Here’s A 3D Hologram-ish Display That Actually Looks Good

July 25, 2018 by Dave Haynes

Hat tip to John Baggot of ComQi for pointing me to this …

If you have been around digital signage for a few years, you’ve seen periodic attempts by companies to show glasses-free 3D displays, or holographic-ish stuff that could only be viewed by staring inside boxes.

I’ve even, recently, seen glasses-free 3D LED displays. Which, by the way, looked horrendous.

3D display tech really isn’t there yet, and there’s also those pesky little things like workable businesses cases for what are novelty displays.

That stated, THIS is pretty interesting – a Brooklyn, NY start-up called Looking Glass that combines lightfield and volumetric display tech to create small-ish displays that show high-definition, full color 3D content running at up to 60 frames per second.

Based at least on what’s on this video (below), it looks really good.

The displays are LCDs combined with a series of filters/films fixed in a block of lucite. It’s primary purpose is to help 3D animators see their work rendered in actual 3D.

You can imagine how the digital signage ecosystem would look at this tech, and think about things like merchandising displays for smaller objects like shoes and purses.

There is a development kit that makes these displays interactive when plugged into PCs with enough horsepower.

The company has an oversubscribed Kickstarter campaign and a lab in Hong Kong manufacturing the first products to ship, in September. There is a 9-inch and a 16-inch version, with costs starting at $400 (special offer).

I met a hardcore display nerd at InfoComm who told me the really interesting technology that was going to start coming on the signage radar screen was light field displays. I don’t really have my head around that tech, as yet, but the Looking Glass product uses it.