Looking Glass Portrait – Holographic Display
lookingglassfactory.com
lookingglassfactory.com
2D-to-3D Conversion: 1000 Credits
Convert 2D images into 3D depth images for holographic display.
+$150.00
2D-to-3D Conversion: 100 Credits
Convert 2D images into 3D depth images for holographic display.
+$20.00
Instead of excited I'm now disillusioned and irritated.
Imagine Adobe tried to charge you every time you converted an image format in photoshop. Is the conversion process so complex that you need to upload a sample image to their servers or something? Why on earth can't I do that locally as many times as I like? It totally stymies experimentation.
It is a cloud-based service, Owl3D. They use AI to deduce depth info from photos. You can subscribe to Owl3D directly, for $8 a month, and get 300 uploads per day for that (so, 9,000 a month for $8, vs 20 for $100 Looking Glass). I don't know if that direct Owl3D subscription can take advantage of depth info though: https://www.owl3d.ai/faqs
You can always bring your own 3D models/videos/etc into it, you don't need to pay them to do that. I personally don't see anything wrong with this.
Maybe your mindset is more indicative of the general population, but I do think most people understand that 3D holograms and 2D photos are different and would not expect a photo to suddenly have 3D properties on the display as if by magic (perhaps that is hoping too much though).
I don't expect to have to buy credits to convert them. There's no mention that I need to, until you get to the extras page when you go to purchase. That changes the entire set of assumptions I had (from "I can play with this and use it to explore whatever I find interesting", to "I have to pay to use it in a way they dictate").
Since then I've found that you probably don't need to do that. But that's not the impression that 'extra' gives. They don't mention anywhere that you don't need the credits to do the conversion.
just upload it to some publicly accessible website? It doesn't look that hard.
HoloPlay Studio works with PC and Mac.
To import, edit, process and convert depth photos, videos, and other holographic media, almost all PCs and Macs with HDMI and USB-C will work.
To run and create heavier-duty interactive applications with Unity or Unreal, we recommend a PC with a GTX 1650 or equivalent, CPU with Intel i5 or higher, and at least 8GB of RAM.
It sounds like the discrete GPU is only needed for specific things which seem like they could reasonably need a discrete GPU
(We're both talking about the "Minimum Requirements" section on https://lookingglassfactory.com/product/portrait, in the bottom right of the page below the big blue buy button)
Super impressed. If you have some questions, ask I might able to try things tomorrow. Also ideas for projects welcome ...
we have some EDA and heartrate wristbands, so I first thought about displaying a pumping heart in sync with mine.
hardware was great but the software was a useless mess and I donated them.
once again, hardware folks trying to design software, is like fish trying to design bicycles.
(so many basic things wrong including proprietary software, lack of cross-platform support, etc etc etc, I didn't even bother trying to catalog them all)
(what did I expect? oh, I dunno... in 2021... WebGL and three.js and a bunch of flat file HTML demos that work right in major browsers on a raspberry pi, mac or pc laptop...)
Played with it for an hour or two. It now sits unplugged on my desk. It’s too distracting to be always on, and too limited to turn on occasionally. I’m just not sure what to do with this thing.
I'd grab one immediately to play around with, if (and only if) it's dev friendly.
That price feels right, and the product is pretty damn cool, imo.
The fact there's no killer app here and potential uses fall flat upon closer inspection will likely mean this technology has more of a future at entertainment venues, maybe museums, I don't know. But not as personal mainstream devices.
The illusion doesn't have multiple vertical layers, but it still looks 3D if you are off-angle. You just see the same image(s) up there that you would if you bent down. Turning your head flattens the image though.
But, most important, this is very interesting future tech, which means it is prime HN material even if we cannot find a good use for it.
If you're asking whether you can see multiple translucent layers, like a hologram from a movie or tv show, then I'd also say yes. But I'd warn that there's a 58 degree viewing angle in front that you can see the images from. You can't look at the sides (or back!) of the display and see anything, for that matter.