Apologies if this has been brought up before - I did a quick search and didn't see any.

Dear Santa,

As I have been very bad all year, I would like about 12 of these please.

Or the kitty gets it.

Sincerely yours,

Issmir

Holy crap.

It's such a mechanically simple idea.

Why haven't we seen it before?



-karma

Because Awesome takes time to integrate into the consensus of reality.

Agreed. Took me a minute to figure out what they were doing, but oh wow. It's not a perfect hologram, walking through it would hurt!

But it's quite clever.

I do have already seen pictures of volumetric displays before; in my opinion the possible applications are limited.

Granted, though the beauty of scientific discoveries is that they react with each other in often completely unpredictable ways; Q.V. the invention of the Vacuum Cleaner and the Tin Can combining in the home of a board and playful individual into the invention of the Hovercraft.

(Admittedly, the hovercraft is itself pretty limited, but I hope you take my point.)

One of the things the demo video made me think of was...

Back in the day before I became a corporate sellout (ALL HAIL MONEY!) I used to be a professional stage manager and assistant director in theatre and opera. The most popular way of staging a piece (play, opera, musical, ballet, whatever) is under a proscenium arch - that big picture frame that everyone sits in front of. This is the format that cinema evolved from.

But another popular and cool way of staging is in the round - where the seats are all around a circular performance space (you may have been to concerts like this if not plays). It's a challenging way to stage something because of the sight-lines, but has some great advantages and possibilities.

Now... imagine volumetric "in the round" cinema. A movie you can see from any and every angle. (well, on the X/Y axis, not the Z, but until we start showing movies in space let's not worry about that)

Come to think of it, if anyone remembers the old DMZ box-set for SR1, very much like the Holo Theatre they had in the mall map.

The technology isn't at that level yet, but once there's a financially viable way to use a new technology the research tends to blossom.