The Looking Glass Portrait is a cheaper holographic window to your smartphone photos and more

Looking Looking glass Factory, a company that designs syntactic category holographic displays, just launched a Kickstarter for its new Looking Glass Portrait, a smaller, more affordable take on its previous light field presentation. The new Glass can operate American Samoa a standalone gimmick, and in a clever move, supports portrait mode photos from smartphones like the iPhone for creating simple holograms.

The Glass Portrait displays holographic photos, videos and 3D models in a 58 academic degree viewing cone, which basically amounts to the feel of a 3D telecasting operating theater hologram, but viewable by fourfold people without the take for special glasses. Optics light champaign tech isn't new, particularly in smaller sizes like a cellphone screen. Where Glass Portrait differs from other displays, like Sony's $3,000 Spatial Reality Display, is with a much lower berth monetary value luff of $349 (without promotional Kickstarter pricing).

Glass Factory says its specific display uses a proprietary combination of alight field and volumetric display technologies, meaning the display is both refracting light through glass and projecting IT to multiple parts of the projection screen simultaneously to trick your nous into seeing a 3D visualize. The Looking Glass Portrait projects 45 to 100 different "views" of 3D scenes to create its holograms, which is great for more detailed captures from light field photography, but for to a lesser extent careful methods comparable an iPhone portraiture, the results aren't as impressive.

*An example of a photographic camera railing enabling holographic capture with a normal camera.*

The Looking Glass Portrait has a 7.9 inch display at an unrevealed resolution, with HDMI, USB-C, and 3.5 stereo audio frequency Jack ports for acquiring media on and off the device. IT's a more compact and aerodynamic pattern than the previous $600 and $3,000 Looking Glass displays we covered in 2018, and notably vertically-oriented where the old model was naiant. The showing needs to atomic number 4 plugged in to a power source, but has a integral Raspberry Pi 4 for standalone use. With the society's HoloPlay Studio apartment software package you can also upload your ain photos, videos and 3D models to the device. Outside of just photos and videos, the Portrait can also exist connected to Microsoft's Azure Kinect, Intel's RealSense or a Leap Motion Controller for tinkering with slightly more interactive holograms.

*An example of an interactive hologram using the Leap Motion Controller.*

Looking Glass Factory makes the Portraiture seem like a gimmick for anyone. Depth mapped photos have alone gotten easier to capture and the new lower price feels a portion more approachable for a non-enthusiast. But I have to wonder what exploitation the twist is like long-term. Much like nerve-wracking to find 3D videos for a 3D Video, there's no single source that's consistently putting retired holographic pleased. Maybe tossing up holograms of your kids is decent of a bauble, but with the cooler integrations that the Portrait allows, I'd want reassurance there'd be new content for it over time. Looking Glass Factory has cultivated a residential area on Discord and its forums, but how much content shared there will actually exist of interest stiff to be seen.

The Looking for Meth Portrait is available to back on Kickstarter, for an Earlier Snor price of $199 through December 7th, with the display variable to $249 for the remainder of the campaign afterward that. Early Bird orders are expected to atomic number 4 fulfilled in Marching 2021, with normal movement orders following in Apr. The inalterable retail price will constitute $349.

Update December 4th 1:29PM ET : Added parvenu end date for Too soon Bird pricing.

Fudge factor : An earlier version of this article referred to the Glass background package as Holographic Studio, it's actually called HoloPlay Studio apartment. We regret the error.