About this time last year, the Looking Glass Factory launched a 32-inch, 8K-resolution 3D lightfield display for retail, medical imaging and entertainment. Now the company has announced a personal holographic display called the Portrait.
"Ever since I was a little kid, I dreamed of the moment that I’d be able to have a holographic display of my own," said Looking Glass Factory CEO, Shawn Frayne. "I imagined what it would be like to send someone a holographic birthday message, or to say hello as a hologram to my great-great-great granddaughter. Looking Glass Portrait, the culmination of six years of work by our Brooklyn and Hong Kong based team, makes those dreams real for more people than ever before."
Currently raising production funds over on Kickstarter, the Looking Glass Portrait is aimed at artists, designers, developers, filmmakers, photographers, and anyone who wants to explore 3D capture and creation. The company says that users can get started with just a computer and a smartphone, and no programming knowledge is needed.
The device features a 7.9-inch holographic lightfield display at 2,048 x 1,536 resolution, and 4:3 aspect – though given the image depth, Frayne prefers to think in terms of 4:3:2. It's reported to use proprietary optics that can make the images onscreen appear to float out of the device, and technology has been included to reduce the effects of ambient light to enhance the quality of the visuals.
It can generate up to 100 different perspectives of a 3D image, making it the only display available that can be simultaneously viewed by a number of people gathered around the display, with each getting a unique stereoscopic view of the holograms onscreen. All without needing to don special glasses or headsets, or employ eye-tracking technology.
Though the device can be connected to a PC or Mac to run more demanding 3D content, it rocks its own Raspberry Pi computer and software combo that enables it to run recorded (lightweight) holograms at 60 frames per second.
It will ship with HoloPlay Studio software for PC/Mac so that users can upload and edit content and then export up to 1,000 holographic media files to the Portrait, including "family pictures transformed into holographic photographs (thanks to new capture capabilities in phones like the iPhone X, 11, and 12), holographic video messages, animated 3D characters, and more."
As a first step towards holographic video calls, the device supports Azure Kinect, Intel RealSense and iPhone cameras for recording holographic video messages to share with other Portrait users. And there's also support for the Unreal engine, Unity, Autodesk, Maya, Blender and more to enable developers to create interactive applications.
The Looking Glass Portrait tips the scales at 1.3 lb (660 g), and if you get in early, Kickstarter pledge levels start at US$199. Should all go as expected, shipping is estimated to begin in March/April, 2021. The eventual retail price will be $349. The video below has more.
Source: Looking Glass Factory