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Author | Moonshot

Editor | Jingyu

After smartphones, the hardware category that has been able to arouse the enthusiasm of digital fans in recent years is mixed reality.

From Microsoft's HoloLens, Magic Leap, Meta's Meta Quest series built around the metaverse, to Apple's most innovative hardware since the iPhone, Apple Vision Pro, Sony and Pico are promoting VR in the gaming field, while Nreal, Rokid, Huawei, and Xiaomi are targeting the eyes of mass consumers and launching one AR smart glasses after another.

What these hardware devices have in common is that they allow users to escape from 2D screens and enter the era of 3D interaction.

In these product promotional videos, the pictures depicted by mixed reality are so vivid and within reach. In science fiction movies and games, there will be no 2D screens in the future, and the windows of cyber cities will be filled with interactive three-dimensional landscapes.

butRegardless of AR, VR, or MR, they are still hampered by the problem of "wearing a helmet on the head, blocking the view, and allowing one person to use it alone".。

After all, we are still in an era where you need to wear glasses to watch 3D movies. Such devices are still expensive toys for digital geeks or game fans.

But there is a company that wants to get rid of the bulky equipment and make mixed reality visible to the naked eye. It provides the most abstract and reasonable solution at present. The product is priced ridiculously expensive, but it makes people feel that it is the future.

That is Looking Glass, a company that dares to sell 16-inch monitors for $6,000 and 32-inch monitors with the tagline "If you ask, you can't afford it." The company slogan reads:Beyond the headset, experience space。

Looking Glass's slogan | Image source: Looking Glass

The 13-inch iPad Pro with the best screen and M4 chip only costs $1,300. Is Looking Glass really crazy, or is it really available? Or is it just a gimmick company that wants to stand at the forefront of the trend and wait to be recruited by big companies after receiving investment?

01

"Blade Runner" shines into reality

Looking Glass sells just one type of product: holographic screens.

That is, there is no need to wear any equipment, and the mixed reality screen that can be seen and interacted with by the naked eye can be magnified to the extreme, just like what Gosling saw in "Blade Runner 2049".

The cyber sense in everyone's eyes must first be three-dimensional｜Image source: Blade Runner 2049

Looking Glass was founded in 2014 when virtual reality was booming. The media commented on them as "very cool technology, but too expensive." Previously, their 15-inch monitor sold for $6,000 (about 44,000 yuan), but now the 16-inch monitor only sells for $4,000, which is considered "affordable to the people."

At the end of 2020, they finally launched their first "affordable" device - the holographic photo frame Looking Glass Portrait priced at US$349 (about RMB 2,500).

This photo frame can provide up to 100 different 3D image viewing angles, and its technology is more advanced than the naked-eye 3D display launched by Sony in the same year.Because Sony uses eye tracking technology, Looking Glass realizes light diffraction in the imaging stage. When multiple people look at the photo frame at the same time, they can see the holographic 3D effect.

Since it is a photo frame, how do you get holographic photos? Photos can be taken with an iPhone and then edited into 3D images using the software provided by Looking Glass, while videos need to be taken with Kinect or Intel's RealSense camera.

It’s really cool to put the whole family into a 3D photo frame｜Image source: Looking Glass

The universal usage scenarios (mainly video calls and family photo frames), the affordable price for ordinary people (the crowdfunding price is US$199), and the slogan "your first holographic device" have allowed Looking Glass Portrait to raise more than US$2.5 million through direct crowdfunding on Kickstart.

Despite good reviews from consumers, after the novelty wore off, Portrait became just a high-end photo frame on the desk or a test screen for a handful of holographic developers.

It wasn't until 2023 that Apple launched spatial photos and videos on the iPhone 15 Pro and Vision Pro, allowing users to shoot spatial images by raising their hands. However, consumers found that there was no carrier to watch them back (unless you don't buy an Apple Vision Pro that costs more than 20,000 RMB).

Looking Glass Go｜Image source: Looking Glass

August 8,Looking Glass launches its second "people-friendly" product, the $299 Looking Glass GoGo has a 6-inch screen and a foldable stand. It is smaller and thinner than Portrait, weighing only 235 grams. When folded, it is about the same size as a mobile phone in a case. Spatial images taken by Apple devices can be uploaded directly to Go via Wi-Fi. Looking Glass also provides editing software for converting 2D photos to 3D.

And Go is not only a photo frame. Under the influence of generative AI, Looking Glass has also found a new way to play desktop holographic images: virtual dolls.

This is much more fun than posting my photo. | Image source: Looking Glass

Looking Glass has designed a digital doll called Uncle Rabbit, which has a holographic "body" and a "brain" connected to ChatGPT. It sounds like a New York gangster boss, but it can write poetry, chat with you, provide you with travel advice, and help you retrieve information.

Uncle Rabbit is just one of Looking Glass’s many digital creatures, including a Shiba Inu, an anime girl, a company employee, and endless possibilities for the future, such as a celebrity or a lost lover.

After all, today's generative AI can already have a cyber love affair with people that is so real that it is indistinguishable from the real thing. Looking Glass further gives it a visible and interactive carrier. Imagine that in the future, when you walk into a stadium, a holographic projection of your favorite player will introduce you to the game information at the entrance. When you enter a store, the brand spokesperson is no longer a beautiful poster, but will give you a holographic introduction to the products. When you return home, there will be a butler similar to "Jarvis" to chat with you... In the imagination of the holographic screen, it is as if the magical world in "Harry Potter" can be realized with modern technology soon.

The murals in the movie "Harry Potter" made the concept of "holographic images" deeply rooted in people's hearts｜Image source: Warner Films

02

Holographic screen, how big is its potential?

Whether it is science fiction movies such as "Blade Runner", "Ghost in the Shell", and "Mars Express", or games such as "Cyberpunk 2077" and "Ghost Walker", we have already seen holographic projection technology in many entertainment works.

Cyberpunk 2077 Holographic landscape of Night City｜Image source: Cyberpunk 2077

In the future world, holographic projection has become like our current LED display. In the 1970s and 1980s, when LED was first used, it was also used for commercial and industrial applications, such as billboards, traffic signals and special displays. At that time, a large LED billboard cost thousands to tens of thousands of dollars. Today, there may be dozens of large LED screens in a shopping mall. This process has only been more than 40 years.

Beyond advertising and displaying information, holographic screens, like other mixed reality devices, have the potential to redefine content.

For example, games and movies. VR games have been developed for many years, but they still cannot avoid the embarrassment of wearing separate devices face to face. Interactive holographic screens may be small enough to become a Pokémon on the shoulder or large enough to project a mahjong table or ping-pong table in the future.

If Apple's Immersive Video brings breadth to images, using 180-degree spatial video to make the audience feel as if they are in the scene, then holographic movies will give spatial depth to flat images. Looking Glass has produced the first holographic movie, "Zanzibar: Trouble in Paradise", a short film about marine environmental protection, shot entirely with iPhone spatial video.。

VR running group game｜Image source: Tilt Five

In the fields of healthcare, education, and engineering, people have been trying to visualize complex data and concepts in 3D for more than a decade, just as 3D4Medical and Visible Body on iPad Pro have greatly helped medical students. In the future, medical students will be able to see a holographic model of the human heart with their naked eyes, and architects will be able to present proportional buildings directly to clients. Screens have already changed the way we work and learn, and holographic images will only go further.

The application area on the Looking Glass official website | Image source: Looking Glass

"We think this will be bigger than the transition from radio to television, or from black and white to color. We will get there together," the Looking Glass team wrote on its official website.

Although there is still a long way to go before the real holographic images in "Blade Runner 2049", with the "spatial video" technology with simple 3D effects driven by Apple Vision Pro being transferred to iPhone phones, it is conceivable that such audio and video content will show explosive growth. On the display side, in addition to various head displays, Looking Glass's "holographic album" product may become the next explosive category. After all, putting a lava lamp on the table now is a bit too nostalgic.

It took more than 40 years to develop from LED to holographic imaging. Perhaps 2077 will come sooner than we thought?