Looking Glass, which makes special screens that display 3D holograms you can see without wearing a headset or glasses, just added iOS support to its tech. That means you can view Cinematic Mode videos, custom apps, and 3D content from your iPhone or iPad on this display, without relying on a powerful desktop to process it first.
Previously, your phone was only really good for turning individual photos into 3D holograms and sending them over to the display via Wi-Fi. This update brings a bunch of new iOS tools into the mix, making the whole experience more accessible.
For starters, the new Hologram Video app – which is currently in beta – transforms Cinematic Mode videos (footage in which you can control the depth of field, or background blur effect, after the fact) that you've shot on your iPhone into life-like holograms that you or a group can view from different angles.
Next, the company's plugin for the Unity game engine – in which you can create games, apps, and immersive content with 3D models and animations – now supports iOS. So anything you build in Unity to display as a hologram can now be controlled and beamed straight from your iPhone or iPad. For example, you could animate a scene featuring a fantastical creature walking through an enchanted forest, and show that off in 3D on a Looking Glass screen.
Looking Glass has also put together a couple of demo apps to showcase what's possible with iOS devices paired to its displays. One of them gives you an up-close look at 3D scans of historical sculptures and other artifacts. This could come in handy at a museum, where visitors can walk up to iPads alongside an exhibit, and tap around to rotate and zoom into details of the 3D model to learn more about the object.
There's a similar app in the works for sneakerheads to check out details of shoes in retail stores. Looking Glass is also working on 3D Memoji that can mimic your facial expressions in real-time using an iPhone's camera pointed at you, as well as a tool to display models generated from medical scanning data.
The company hopes this will usher in more user-built applications and content for its displays. These new features work on the 6-inch Looking Glass Go (which retails at US$279), as well as the 16-inch wall-mountable Spatial Display ($4,000). You'll need an iPhone 15 Pro or Pro Max, or an M4-equipped iPad Pro to use them.
We reviewed the Go last month, and came away impressed with the display's ability to add another dimension to photos and visual content. I'd be especially keen to see this stuff up on one of the company's massive price-on-request 65-inch screens.
Source: Looking Glass
