The Looking Glass Go is a 6 inch, 1440 x 2560 pixel display connected to a stand with support for adjustable viewing angles. But it’s not just a standard digital photo frame, it’s a glasses-free 3D display that’s the most compact, affordable holographic display to date from Looking Glass.
It’s expected to ship in June, 2024 with a suggested retail price of $300. But Super Early Bird backers of the Looking Glass Go Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign can reserve one for as little as $199.
The display isn’t exactly a standalone screen: it doesn’t have a battery, so you’ll need to connect a power source. But with a USB-C port for power and data, you should be able to easily plug it into a wall jack or a USB power bank for use around the house or on the go.
There’s also a 3.5mm audio jack and support for WiFi, allowing you to load 3D images onto the Looking Glass with a wireless or wired (USB) connection.
Looking Glass says the whole thing measures 160 x 80 x 19mm (6.3″ x 3.2″ x 0.8″), making it about the size of two smartphones stacked atop one another. It has a plastic, steel, and glass body and weighs 235 grams.
The “advanced high precision light field optics” offer 58-degree viewing angles, and the hinge allows you to tilt the screen at angles between 0 and 90 degrees.
If you’re wondering what you’re supposed to actually look at on this little display, Looking Glass says the screen supports 3D images captured on an iPhone or Android phone with support for spatial photography using apps like Luma AI. But you can also use Looking Glasse’s software to convert 3D photos into 3D pictures, or download 3D images or “holograms” uploaded by others.
The advantage of a device like the Looking Glass Go is that you get 3D effects without the need for a headset. But the down side seems to be… just about everything else. While it’s kind of a neat trick, it’s not exactly a Star Wars-style hologram. You’re still looking at a flat display that provides a little more depth information than most screens, but it’s hard to envision many practical applications.
Maybe the most compelling example so far are Looking Glass Liteforms, which combine ChatGPT and 3D imagery to create interactive virtual characters that move and talk. And maybe one day we’ll see similar technology enable real-time 3D messaging apps that let users communicate with each other in 3D environments without the need for a headset.
But for now? It’s basically a digital picture frame with support for spatial depth.
finally! someone calling his product ‘go’!
We didn’t have that for nearly a week…
Is this just another lenticular display falsely claimed to be a hologram? Just a cheap plastic overlay on a regular LED display.
There should be law against claiming fake holograms.
This is a hologram just like the two wheeled “Hoverboards” kids ride around on are hoverboards.
How is this different from phones with glasses free 3D displays like the Red Hydrogen One or HTC EVO 3D? Looks to be a similar effect and probably similar tech as current glasses free displays.
iirc it’s something like multiple screens layered atop each other? so it’s not quite that “halved resolution with parallax barrier” thing from the 3ds. (but my knowledge of this is way out-of-date)
but i remember from voxatron (which is one of the supported apps for the original looking glass) -related development screenshots that it was rendering a relatively large grid of views from different angles.
Amazon should buy this tech and make a cellphone out of it… and call it Fire phone 2.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_Phone
3d displays on phones have been tried and they always fail to produce successor devices because they make text look blurry. You can see how blurry it would get just looking at the video. Also they have to compete with every other android (’cause what else are they going to use, pureOS?) phone on specs, price, and having UI, workflow, and social network effect features that can conceivably draw people away from iphones, which google can and does develop but doesn’t want to commit to AOSP.
Starwars type holograms are physically impossible. There was a japanese company who used an IR laser to literally burn pockets of plasma in mid air. But those are incredibly dangerous and are not practical.
This video sort of helps explain why holograms in science fiction cannot work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7ruHq2efmI
Still waiting on solar powered color e-ink photo frames. At least those won’t be tied to some particular service provider.
That particular choice of actor make me wonder who exactly do they think are using the Looking Glass Lifeforms.
Anyway, if you want an open source, local version that doesn’t spy on you and you can do your own mind surgery on so it doesn’t talk down to you so much, here’s this thing:
https://github.com/semperai/amica
Hope you like spending lots of money on RAM and VRAM, get while the government still lets you own more than 16gB of either without a license.
Oh, I see, they’re “LITEforms”, not lifeforms. I was just thinking about how much of a misnomer the plural “life forms” is since they’re chatgpt, so they’re all the same (evil) entity anyway.
Finally I can hang out with 2pac