Hands-On with Looking Glass 8K Holographic Display!
The Evolution of Holographic Content: A Community-Driven Experience
The release of a suite of applications for importing OBJ files or converting portrait mode photos from iPhones marked an exciting milestone in the world of holographic content. This development was met with enthusiasm by developers and enthusiasts alike, who began to explore new possibilities with holographic media.
One notable example is the community's interest in video game development and photogrammetry. Developers are using the Looking Glass system to create immersive experiences that blur the lines between reality and fantasy. For instance, a community member created a way to pull screenshots from 500 different video games into their Looking Glass, resulting in breathtaking holographic recreations of iconic games like Halo and Counter-Strike.
Another fascinating example is the ability to take regular 2D photos and transform them into multiple views using AI algorithms. This process allows users to create stunning holographic representations of everyday objects, such as a jet engine, which can be viewed in three dimensions using the Looking Glass system.
The software side of things is also being iterated upon, with the goal of turning more 3D content into holographic media formats like Quilt Set. The community's efforts have been instrumental in this endeavor, with developers porting popular video game engines like Doom to run seamlessly on the Looking Glass system. The source code for these games is open, allowing the community to create plugins and modify the experience to suit their needs.
The Looking Glass system's capabilities are being pushed to new limits, with the hardware being designed to accommodate more complex 3D content. The display is hollow, allowing for a one-to-one representation of objects, which enhances the overall user experience. This technology is still in its infancy, but it holds immense potential for revolutionizing the way we interact with digital information.
The community's passion and creativity are driving innovation, and their contributions to the Looking Glass system have been remarkable. From 3D printing to video game development, the possibilities seem endless, and the future of holographic content looks brighter than ever.
Looking Ahead: The Future of Holographic Content
As the Looking Glass system continues to evolve, it's clear that the real-time rendering capabilities will play a significant role in its success. The community's efforts have already yielded impressive results, with developers creating stunning holographic experiences using popular video game engines like Doom.
The future looks bright for this technology, with the potential for real-time 3D content creation and interaction becoming increasingly accessible to developers and enthusiasts alike. The Looking Glass system is poised to become a hub for creative expression, with a vast array of plugins, demos, and community-driven projects pushing the boundaries of what's possible.
The Maker Faire Connection
It's interesting to note that the Looking Glass system has its roots in the maker faire scene, where enthusiasts gathered to share ideas and showcase innovative projects. The community's passion and creativity are reminiscent of those early days, when makers and hobbyists came together to push the boundaries of what was thought possible.
The success of the Looking Glass system is a testament to the power of community-driven innovation, where individuals come together to create something greater than the sum of its parts. As we look to the future, it's clear that this technology will continue to evolve and improve, with the community at its core driving the creative process forward.
Hands-On Experience
We had the opportunity to experience the Looking Glass system firsthand, using a Leap Motion Controller to interact with 3D representations in mid-air. The display is hollow, allowing for a one-to-one representation of objects, which enhanced our user experience and provided an immersive experience unlike anything we've seen before.
The sense of presence and interaction was palpable, as if our hands were actually touching the objects they represented. This technology has the potential to revolutionize the way we interact with digital information, providing a more intuitive and engaging experience for users.
The Looking Glass system is poised to become a new standard for holographic content creation, and its impact will be felt across various industries and communities. As we move forward, it's clear that this technology will continue to evolve and improve, driven by the creativity and passion of enthusiasts like you.
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey everyone it's norm from tested here and there's a familiar face to long time tested viewers this is sean fraim ceo of looking glass factory sean so good to see you in person yeah it's uh quite a treat oh my goodness it's been a couple years since we've had you in our studio right since then you guys launched and have shipped the looking glass portrait as one of my favorite pieces of technology last year that's this display right here and today we're taking a look at some of the larger versions of looking glass so first of all for folks who maybe their first time seeing this product tell us about this idea of looking glass and the technology you guys have developed to create as we can see three-dimensional images in this volume yeah well i hope a lot of folks can see these in person soon because it's always hard to convey this over 2d media but the looking glass is a holographic display the more technical term for it would be a light field display and it's different from any two-dimensional display you've ever seen in that we control the directionality of light so normally a display will shine like the pixels of a lcd panel will shine with two properties of intensity and color but we add a third property of directionality to in the case of our largest system 100 million points of light to recreate the field of light that makes the real world feel real and therefore what you look at through the looking glass is as real as reality so without having to wear three glasses you can see a three-dimensional image because uh all at once at a you know video frame rate you are displaying multiple views that's right i've seen the software so what the input is is like a grid instead of just one image it's this image of all possible angles in your field of view seen at once so whether my head is here or over there we're still seeing a different perspective of this image yeah exactly and we sort of nerdly call that format a quilt because it's a quilt of the different perspectives on that you would see and what's going on in the software that we've built in the background is basically we're taking all this different 3d stuff whether it's something that someone might have designed in a 3d program like blender or an engine like unity or a portrait mode photo that has depth information that someone shot and we sort of transcode that or convert it into this intermediate holographic format like the quilt is one example and then that outputs through the displays and that can be something that's baked in so a video file that's playing dozens of these images all at once or something generated in real time that's right so our entire technology stack of both the hardware and the software is a real time stack meaning you can show static holographic photos and images you can show recorded video that's playing it up to 60 frames per second but you can also have interactive applications too so i want to talk about the hardware because that's true new hardware that i've never seen before here that you guys announced last year i've been working on i've always asked you guys about scaling right the various different displays you've made in the past like how big can this get yeah and it usually takes people 10 seconds right exactly so this is the portrait is of this fixed size this fixed resolution you have a 4k display here an ak display here is it just a matter of getting better processing and finding display panels as well as the way you're optically affecting it and just scaling it up yeah i mean the the core technological ideas of the portrait are bigger than the other systems there are challenges once you start to hit 8k video so um we're generating 8k holographic quilts on the fly basically for interactive applications and in all of our plugins into unity and unreal and blender and so on um so there are definitely challenges on the software side when going from a like two and a half k type of resolution up to an 8k resolution but in terms of the core physics principles they're the same throughout the entire lineup and you're getting effectively a similar field of view or you're targeting a similar field of view as well as the the resolution and the clarity of the image yeah that's right you can get more folks around like our largest system the 8k gen 2 uh the looking glass 8k gen 2 just because it's bigger but in terms of the field of view they're all between 50 to 60 degrees from a user experience standpoint when i look at the portrait i have one on my desk i turn my portrait photos and even some of the you can kind of hack uh the cinema mode i saw that yeah it's really cool to think of this as you know like a phone or tablet size display and having those images even looking at these displays the larger ones in person having things are more one-to-one size change is kind of the way i think of how i want to interact or just absorb that and what have you found is the benefit of just not not just having a bigger thing that you can have more people around right but having the actual objects themselves be more one-to-one size yeah i mean for any situation where you really want to have a group of people around i mean these are my kiddos actually i took a um light field photo up so when you want to show something to a group of people and for these larger systems now it's more professional audiences but eventually these will go to a wider and wider group of folks you just need something that's larger format you don't you know typically gather around a phone to watch a movie um in 2d and similarly you wouldn't want to experience some holographic content on only the portrait that's great for a lot of things but it's not suitable for like a trade show or an experiential marketing experience or a video call like an experimental like holographic video call i say render of a face right there and that is i mean that's actually larger than than one to one right but when you can have a real-time you know light field style video call with uh azure connect or something right capturing it um theoretically that's that's a different type of communication experience than you would holding a phone up or looking at a smaller display yeah you're connecting with the content differently yeah absolutely and i think you know every time we make something larger like how much larger can it go and there's no physical limit to this technology because we're controlling the the field of light the directionality of a bunch of points of light and that can physically scale to any size so we're not scattering light off a physical medium or off of a gas or things like that so um we're really excited to see what um a lot of folks do with the holographic applications that they've already been making in these larger format systems one of the things you did when you launched the the portrait was release a suite of applications for importing you know obj files or converting a portrait mode photo from an iphone and you guys have iterated on that on the software side but people are doing some really amazing things you know i drop in on your discord from time to time and there are a lot of video game developers for example or people are interested in things like photogrammetry you know what are some of the surprising pieces of holographic content that people are making well i mean um i there's so much uh somebody in the community and any everyone should hop into our discord if you're curious to see where there's this bubbling up of amazing creativity in hologram land um and i think it's if you go to look dot glass slash discord folks can join the community there somebody made a way to pull any screenshot from like 500 different video games into their looking glass so they're taking holographic screenshots from 500 different video games like halo counter strike what not other folks have found ways to take regular 2d photos and through different ai algos be able to um create the multitude of views that then can run in the looking glass so there's a lot of stuff that's going on and input wise you want this to not just be a passive experience that's right so can we see yeah some of the demos you've created for some some interactivity yeah absolutely so i'm going to use the um leap motion controller but you know we're kind of any peripheral that's out there in xr land we love to use and so this is just one example and so here's a jet engine that we were preparing for a product demo my hands is being tracked by the sleep motion controller and a little 3d representation is made in the display um and i can kind of like tony stark style explode view it x-ray it um actually maybe one thing i should point out is that um the displays are hollow so the holograms are kind of like existing in this space in the real world well even that representation of your hand there is close to one to one yeah which speaks to just it's a more intuitive or natural way for you to interact with something without having to directly touch it because you're not doing a scaling in your head you know circulating like a small pinch and touch thing that is as if your hand was interacting with it yeah this can get to i mean you're hitting it you know right on the head that we can do a lot that's one to one at this scale and that is a profound difference from anything that's been available that we've made or anyone has made to my knowledge um before for this sort of group viewing holographic experience yeah so obviously you're iterating on hardware finding like the limits of how far you can push the size uh based on the panels and the optical in the manufacturing that you have right what's next on on the software where what what do you mean obviously you're shipping and delivering these things but you know what do you guys how are you guys thinking about going forward yeah i mean our um our goal is to turn more and more 3d stuff in this wide complex world of different 3d formats different ways to generate 3d content into a holographic media format like the quilt set that can run in these systems and so we're putting in a lot of work on that over um the coming months so have some exciting stuff in the future yeah both the real-time stuff and the stuff the community plug-ins like you said you know whether it's um video game engine graphics engines or you know people have ported uh doom and and that's real time right and that's because the source code's open and they're just it's computer systems today are powerful enough to generate you know the the multiple views all at the same time yep absolutely that creator yang kaiser that made the um the doom um integration basically into the looking glass has made so many amazing plugins for the community just out of passion um and i don't know that's an exciting place um that we've always wanted to be at and we're glad we survived long enough to get here you're reaching that hub where you get a lot of the communities is feeding that sort of content you don't have to have you don't have to generate all the renders all the examples and it's not just your kids anymore it's it's a huge community yeah that's right and you know because you followed the arc of this from back in maker faire days yeah um if anyone actually remembers what maker faire is anymore um of that being what we had hoped would happen at some point and so that that's really happening now it's awesome well so good to see you sean thank you so much guys bringing these here to the city and i'm gonna get some hands on time and check these out cool thanks momhey everyone it's norm from tested here and there's a familiar face to long time tested viewers this is sean fraim ceo of looking glass factory sean so good to see you in person yeah it's uh quite a treat oh my goodness it's been a couple years since we've had you in our studio right since then you guys launched and have shipped the looking glass portrait as one of my favorite pieces of technology last year that's this display right here and today we're taking a look at some of the larger versions of looking glass so first of all for folks who maybe their first time seeing this product tell us about this idea of looking glass and the technology you guys have developed to create as we can see three-dimensional images in this volume yeah well i hope a lot of folks can see these in person soon because it's always hard to convey this over 2d media but the looking glass is a holographic display the more technical term for it would be a light field display and it's different from any two-dimensional display you've ever seen in that we control the directionality of light so normally a display will shine like the pixels of a lcd panel will shine with two properties of intensity and color but we add a third property of directionality to in the case of our largest system 100 million points of light to recreate the field of light that makes the real world feel real and therefore what you look at through the looking glass is as real as reality so without having to wear three glasses you can see a three-dimensional image because uh all at once at a you know video frame rate you are displaying multiple views that's right i've seen the software so what the input is is like a grid instead of just one image it's this image of all possible angles in your field of view seen at once so whether my head is here or over there we're still seeing a different perspective of this image yeah exactly and we sort of nerdly call that format a quilt because it's a quilt of the different perspectives on that you would see and what's going on in the software that we've built in the background is basically we're taking all this different 3d stuff whether it's something that someone might have designed in a 3d program like blender or an engine like unity or a portrait mode photo that has depth information that someone shot and we sort of transcode that or convert it into this intermediate holographic format like the quilt is one example and then that outputs through the displays and that can be something that's baked in so a video file that's playing dozens of these images all at once or something generated in real time that's right so our entire technology stack of both the hardware and the software is a real time stack meaning you can show static holographic photos and images you can show recorded video that's playing it up to 60 frames per second but you can also have interactive applications too so i want to talk about the hardware because that's true new hardware that i've never seen before here that you guys announced last year i've been working on i've always asked you guys about scaling right the various different displays you've made in the past like how big can this get yeah and it usually takes people 10 seconds right exactly so this is the portrait is of this fixed size this fixed resolution you have a 4k display here an ak display here is it just a matter of getting better processing and finding display panels as well as the way you're optically affecting it and just scaling it up yeah i mean the the core technological ideas of the portrait are bigger than the other systems there are challenges once you start to hit 8k video so um we're generating 8k holographic quilts on the fly basically for interactive applications and in all of our plugins into unity and unreal and blender and so on um so there are definitely challenges on the software side when going from a like two and a half k type of resolution up to an 8k resolution but in terms of the core physics principles they're the same throughout the entire lineup and you're getting effectively a similar field of view or you're targeting a similar field of view as well as the the resolution and the clarity of the image yeah that's right you can get more folks around like our largest system the 8k gen 2 uh the looking glass 8k gen 2 just because it's bigger but in terms of the field of view they're all between 50 to 60 degrees from a user experience standpoint when i look at the portrait i have one on my desk i turn my portrait photos and even some of the you can kind of hack uh the cinema mode i saw that yeah it's really cool to think of this as you know like a phone or tablet size display and having those images even looking at these displays the larger ones in person having things are more one-to-one size change is kind of the way i think of how i want to interact or just absorb that and what have you found is the benefit of just not not just having a bigger thing that you can have more people around right but having the actual objects themselves be more one-to-one size yeah i mean for any situation where you really want to have a group of people around i mean these are my kiddos actually i took a um light field photo up so when you want to show something to a group of people and for these larger systems now it's more professional audiences but eventually these will go to a wider and wider group of folks you just need something that's larger format you don't you know typically gather around a phone to watch a movie um in 2d and similarly you wouldn't want to experience some holographic content on only the portrait that's great for a lot of things but it's not suitable for like a trade show or an experiential marketing experience or a video call like an experimental like holographic video call i say render of a face right there and that is i mean that's actually larger than than one to one right but when you can have a real-time you know light field style video call with uh azure connect or something right capturing it um theoretically that's that's a different type of communication experience than you would holding a phone up or looking at a smaller display yeah you're connecting with the content differently yeah absolutely and i think you know every time we make something larger like how much larger can it go and there's no physical limit to this technology because we're controlling the the field of light the directionality of a bunch of points of light and that can physically scale to any size so we're not scattering light off a physical medium or off of a gas or things like that so um we're really excited to see what um a lot of folks do with the holographic applications that they've already been making in these larger format systems one of the things you did when you launched the the portrait was release a suite of applications for importing you know obj files or converting a portrait mode photo from an iphone and you guys have iterated on that on the software side but people are doing some really amazing things you know i drop in on your discord from time to time and there are a lot of video game developers for example or people are interested in things like photogrammetry you know what are some of the surprising pieces of holographic content that people are making well i mean um i there's so much uh somebody in the community and any everyone should hop into our discord if you're curious to see where there's this bubbling up of amazing creativity in hologram land um and i think it's if you go to look dot glass slash discord folks can join the community there somebody made a way to pull any screenshot from like 500 different video games into their looking glass so they're taking holographic screenshots from 500 different video games like halo counter strike what not other folks have found ways to take regular 2d photos and through different ai algos be able to um create the multitude of views that then can run in the looking glass so there's a lot of stuff that's going on and input wise you want this to not just be a passive experience that's right so can we see yeah some of the demos you've created for some some interactivity yeah absolutely so i'm going to use the um leap motion controller but you know we're kind of any peripheral that's out there in xr land we love to use and so this is just one example and so here's a jet engine that we were preparing for a product demo my hands is being tracked by the sleep motion controller and a little 3d representation is made in the display um and i can kind of like tony stark style explode view it x-ray it um actually maybe one thing i should point out is that um the displays are hollow so the holograms are kind of like existing in this space in the real world well even that representation of your hand there is close to one to one yeah which speaks to just it's a more intuitive or natural way for you to interact with something without having to directly touch it because you're not doing a scaling in your head you know circulating like a small pinch and touch thing that is as if your hand was interacting with it yeah this can get to i mean you're hitting it you know right on the head that we can do a lot that's one to one at this scale and that is a profound difference from anything that's been available that we've made or anyone has made to my knowledge um before for this sort of group viewing holographic experience yeah so obviously you're iterating on hardware finding like the limits of how far you can push the size uh based on the panels and the optical in the manufacturing that you have right what's next on on the software where what what do you mean obviously you're shipping and delivering these things but you know what do you guys how are you guys thinking about going forward yeah i mean our um our goal is to turn more and more 3d stuff in this wide complex world of different 3d formats different ways to generate 3d content into a holographic media format like the quilt set that can run in these systems and so we're putting in a lot of work on that over um the coming months so have some exciting stuff in the future yeah both the real-time stuff and the stuff the community plug-ins like you said you know whether it's um video game engine graphics engines or you know people have ported uh doom and and that's real time right and that's because the source code's open and they're just it's computer systems today are powerful enough to generate you know the the multiple views all at the same time yep absolutely that creator yang kaiser that made the um the doom um integration basically into the looking glass has made so many amazing plugins for the community just out of passion um and i don't know that's an exciting place um that we've always wanted to be at and we're glad we survived long enough to get here you're reaching that hub where you get a lot of the communities is feeding that sort of content you don't have to have you don't have to generate all the renders all the examples and it's not just your kids anymore it's it's a huge community yeah that's right and you know because you followed the arc of this from back in maker faire days yeah um if anyone actually remembers what maker faire is anymore um of that being what we had hoped would happen at some point and so that that's really happening now it's awesome well so good to see you sean thank you so much guys bringing these here to the city and i'm gonna get some hands on time and check these out cool thanks mom\n"