Hacker News Reader

Comment by tinus_hn | Hacker News Reader

Would be nice if this would become available as a reasonably priced service for a one off print

Worth noting that this exists already, here and there; you can get full color, full parallax digital holograms from, at the very least, Geola [0] - though "reasonably priced" is a matter of opinion! Making it economical is pretty difficult - the issue is that "mastering" is an inherently time-consuming process; you're writing each hogel one at a time, each hogel is only a square millimeter or smaller, and you're printing at a few dozen hertz max. So each piece inherently eats up a lot of time on the machine, like 3d printing. Then factor in that the plates are boutique, and that rendering all that data is many hours of computer time, and you're possibly looking at least 3 figures for a single A4 plate. That's a tough sell for the consumer market, when the lighting requirements are so stringent (they can only be lit by a single point source, from a strictly defined angle, with no extraneous light sources).

Source: I used to work for a startup that provided this service. We ran out of money.

[0] https://geola.com/

This company can sell a machine and some plates for the price you had to charge for one plate. There’s a chance it does work with this technology.

Yes, the idea is to make this hologram technology more accessible and affordable, so that it is something you can use on a regular basis, not just a one-off occasionally.

We think bringing the technology to a level where you have the hologram printer and can work directly with it will be key in helping holograms go beyond where they have struggled before.

Similar to 3D printing, putting one in your workshop is different than just knowing that there is a workshop out there that will make one for you.

Definitely might be part of where things could go! And I'm sure there will be people who get one of the 3D Hologram Printers for doing just that. Holograms-as-a-Service?

I certainly expect to use HaaS if such a service became available and affordable. One thing I’ve fantasised about for 15 years is a wall-scale full colour hologram of some environments — forests, lunar surface, a city skyline, or perhaps a different one for each wall.

Of course, I’ll have to play with the small ones first, to get a feel for what the tech can and cannot do…

Haas! I like it.

Tiling of the holograms (making smaller holograms that can be tiled to make a larger one) is something we've definitely thought about, and even contemplated for a Kickstarter stretch goal. Wall size holograms would be fun!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com