Looking Glass launches new 3D displays | Hacker News Reader

Looking Glass launches new 3D displays

techcrunch.com

21 pointsPaulHoule14 comments

Zebra Imaging (now defunct) made impressive holographic displays (prints?) ~15 years ago which were illuminated by external light.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhgzWFos6m8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jx3TSQul94E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7D5yzaTn26Y

Those are prints, yes, not holographic displays.

> The company says up to 100 different people can experience the content at the same time

I'm surprised by the limit of 100. I can imagine either unlimited (if it's like a hologram), or a couple (if it tracks eyes and adapts directions of some columns of pixels to the few pairs of eyes). Or do they simply mean it's limited by the amount of space available to stand in front of the monitor... But if it's an actual technological implementaiton, I really wonder what's behind it, if it's fine grained enough for 100 pairs of eyes I'd think it also still looks good to more pairs of eyes

> The displays can show a wide range of media, including holographic images, high-quality videos, and real-time applications

It would be weird if they couldn't, displays are supposed to display whatever you input to them...

This is typical of displays - but not of holograms, which have historically been able to display only a single static image.

I played with a demo unit a few years ago and the viewing angle was very limited. The image isn't 360 it's more like a porthole view in an image with depth. The tech is lenticular meaning there's dozens of 2d images layered at specific viewing angles.

I feel like it's a misnomer to say that 100 different people can see the hologram at the same time. What's really going on is that the lenticular lens shows somewhere between 45 and 100 different views based on the content.

The real limit on the number of people is just how many people you can cram around the display within its field of view.

I have an original Looking Glass display and despite the low resolution, it never fails to impress when turned on.

The main issue is the difficulty in adding new images, requires a PC and special software. I think they address all of this in the new Go model though.

Nintendo perfected this type of tech with the 3DS back in 2011 (!!). In retrospect, that shit was so far ahead of its time.

Looking Glass has some impressive displays, but honestly every time I pick up my 3DS again I wonder why it didn't get more traction, even as the rest of the industry keeps trying to push 3D TVs / cinema.

The 3DS display tech had a pretty rough start with a very narrow viewing sweet-spot, they improved the implementation significantly with the New 3DS. AIUI the actual panel was the same but they used the front facing camera and basic head tracking to compensate for off-axis viewing in software.

If you have an N3DS you can see the display suddenly "lock in" when the head tracking figures out where you are, especially in poor lighting where it might struggle. That's not a bad solution but it obviously only works for a single viewer.

They advertise 45-100 viewers simultaneously. Is it really the same kind of tech? IIRC the 3DS worked for only one viewer and you'd better stay right in front of it if you didn't want to experience cross-eye.

Looking Glass is more complex than the 3DS. The 3DS synthesizes 2 views, Looking Glass can synthesize many more

https://patents.google.com/patent/US11425363B2/en?assignee=L....

Been following Looking Glass for a few years now. When i first saw them, absolutely loved their products and now looking at this, wowza! I can't wait to see one of these in person.

cool. seems like we're at a stage of the curve in which waiting a few years means a major price reduction plus improvement of features

I want to play games on it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com