Speaker 1: The world of sci-fi has been promising us holograms for years, think hollow chess in star wars or princess layer, beaming a message out of R two D two, help me or be
Speaker 2: One can help. You're my only
Speaker 1: Hope a lot of the ho holograms we've seen outside of sci-fi like Tupac or Michael Jackson appearing on stage have actually just been clever illusions, but Silicon valley [00:00:30] company light fill BBL has created a real hologram without the headgear that you can see in front of you, just like a real object.
Speaker 2: I'm here at light field lab in Silicon valley, ready to see a concept known as solid light. They're pitching this as a genuine hologram. This isn't virtual reality. This is an augmented reality. This isn't a picture of [00:01:00] Tupac on a stage. This is gonna be something that feels like a real object that I can actually walk around and see interact with from multiple angles. I have no idea what I'm about to see through that door, but I'm pretty excited to check it out.
Speaker 1: Unlike other technologies, solid light doesn't rely on spinning volumetric displays or reflections projected up onto angle called glass. Instead, light field lab says this technology is the highest resolution holographic display platform [00:01:30] ever designed. A light source sends light through a multi-layered piece of polymer known as a phase guide that steers and focuses the light into midair. Essentially creating a hologram in the space in front of you. The result is what light field lab calls a solid light object that moves refracts and reflects in physical space. Seeing it with my own eyes, I realized the solid light name makes sense. At first it looks like you should be touching something solid, [00:02:00] even if it's just a screen or a piece of reflective of glass, but I was just passing my hands through light.
Speaker 2: So I'm in front of the solid light demonstration now. And it looks probably to you, like, I'm just watching a TV screen that I'm just standing in front of a flat display, but it's actually a hologram. Sorry. I just had to wait for the chameleon to catch a wider. Um, it feels like it should be about here. This is where it should feel like I'm touching a screen, but there's, there's nothing [00:02:30] here. And if I, if I put my hand further through, it's like, I can still see the animal, but my hand is passing through it. I'm six inches into this box and I can't feel anything it's just air. So what should feel like, like a, a flat screen here, maybe I'd be touching the very front of the animal right here. I'm able to actually pass through it. And it, it looks like it should be fairly solid, but it's, um, it's not, it's just thin [00:03:00] air. And the coolest thing is, I mean, my glasses do look great, but these aren't 3d. These are just cause I have bad eyesight. So if I take them off with, or without glasses, it's exactly the same. It's just, it's pretty crazy. No headset, no 3d glasses and like no screen.
Speaker 1: One of the coolest demos I saw was using a magnifying glass to actually magnify the hologram. Just like it was a real object. I didn't just see a [00:03:30] closeup of a display. Like I would with a two dimensional screen. The hologram I saw was about 10 inches across and it was being generated by a single solid light panel though. You don't actually see that panel in the installation light filled lab says each one of those 28 inch diagonal panels generates an effective density of 10 billion pixels per square meter. And they can be scaled up potentially using multiple panels to make a massive wall. Unlike other light effects that you use [00:04:00] forced perspective to create the illusion of dimensions. You can still see the same hologram from multiple angles without any distortion, kind of like you'd see a
Speaker 2: Real object. So I'm standing here about a meter or three feet, uh, away from the display or the kind of the demonstration. And this is where the light build lab team says. That's kind of the optimal viewing a angle. And if I walk around, it's pretty amazing. You sort of, you walk around and it doesn't, it's not like, um, you know, maybe another display where [00:04:30] it starts to look warped or a weird angle, cuz it's designed just to be viewed in this one spot.
Speaker 1: Of course the magic here really, really comes. When you see it with your own eyes. We saw this hologram in a small room and it's hard to capture the full effect and play it back on a 2d screen. But this is just the beginning light filled lab says you'll be able to see this tech out in the real world as early as next year, the company has financial backing from the [00:05:00] likes of Samsung, Verizon and Comcast NBC universal and says it already has alpha partners that are planning to use the tech to create their own hologram displays.
Speaker 2: So the idea is you could come up to a hologram display, maybe at an airport at an entertainment venue at a theme park. And instead just seeing flat screens on a wall, you could see these displays and actually experience holograms in person. So instead of just looking at what is effectively a larger [00:05:30] version of your own TV, you could kind of see something that appears to be a real object, but it's actually just made up of light.
