"3D is a simulation, holography is not," says Woolley, explaining that while 3D appears on a screen, holography appears in your space and is rendered not just as a left and right image, but through 360 degrees. Is this all a bit too like using polarised glasses to watch a 3DTV? "But with AR or MR, you could place characters from Game of Thrones into your existing environment."Īs well as not being 'blindfolded', MR headsets (from Epson's Moverio, and Meta, as well as from Microsoft and Magic Leap) are transparent and, technically, create the illusion of a hologram from an on-screen image. "The key difference between virtual reality and augmented reality – or mixed reality, which is what HoloLens and Magic Leap are – is that in VR you can be placed into Game of Thrones, for example," says Woolley. Given that the concept still feels more science fiction than a forthcoming product, many probably imagine hologram phones to be more like the VR worlds offered by Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, but HoloLens is subtly different. "It's about communications, but it's not a phone as we know it," adds Woolley. HoloLens augments reality effectively the plumber can show you exactly what to do. "The plumber can see on their Microsoft Surface tablet what you're seeing on your HoloLens headset, and they will draw a circle on their tablet around the U-bend you need to tighten up, then they'll circle the spanner you need to use," says Woolley. If you stop light with a screen or a filter, you can create holograms cue the light engine inside Microsoft's HoloLens, which has already been demoed enabling a Skype call to a plumber. The concept of a holo-phone probably means re-thinking the idea of what a phone is. However, there is another way: researchers at the Human Media Lab at Queen's University have demoed a prototype of their HoloFlex tech, which brings glasses-free 3D holograms to smartphone-based games, photos and phone calls, although sadly it's currently very low-resolution. Putting your phone in a box? Hmmm… Not quite what we had in mind. "It uses a patented design built around a miniaturised projection technique, using your smartphone and a very robust, yet near-invisible material." "Viewers simply download or live-stream the relevant content, place their phone in the unit and press play, and a convincing hologram appears in front of them, floating in mid-air," says Sharad Kumar, Co-founder of Virtual Presence. That said, it's already possible to see holograms on your phone using Virtual Presence units. "It looks like the object is spinning in the air but it's not, it's just being projected and reflected," says Woolley. He explains that it's only when light bounces off something that we see brightness and colour.įor now, the only way you can stop light and create a convincing hologram on a phone is by using a glass pyramid on the screen itself the effect is pretty good, but it's hardly a pocket-friendly design. "Technically the concept of a hologram is physically impossible, because you would need to stop a light beam at a point in space," says Karl Woolley, creative technologist at FrameStore, which is working with the super-secretive Magic Leap, a company that's working to create a 3D world by projecting images into your eye.
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