This Talking, Floating Hologram Head Is More Than a Stunt

Light Field Lab’s holograms keep becoming more lifelike.

It’s dark in here. Fans are quietly whirring. Unseen speakers are playing sounds of nature. It appears that artificial foliage has been used to accent one wall. The head is in the middle. It hangs in the shadows, angular, blue and purple. Although there is no screen in sight, the head shines as though it were on one. It appears to be suspended in midair.

And then, the head speaks.

Speaking loudly comes through the speakers. An introduction is followed by some clever banter. The bright head of the undead follows my every move. Its lips moves in unison with its words while its eyes follow me. To put it mildly, the illusion is stunning, but of course it’s a hologram.

This talking head is the most recent advancement in holographic technology from Light Field Lab, a business we first encountered in 2021. Now that everything moves and interacts in real time, it looks more realistic than ever. Are we witnessing the visual entertainment of the future? Here is what we discovered.

Faces of light

Between these various technologies and what Light Field Lab is doing, there are differences. To make light beams interact, they are using extremely small technology and billions of pixels. You can think that an object is floating in space because of the effect. It will soon be feasible to create wall-sized holograms that appear to protrude into space by fusing a number of their unique modules.

Visit our original report for a more thorough explanation of the technique. Holograms come to life: Startup makes things out of nothing but light.

Heads-up interaction

It is practically impossible to make a hologram appear 3D in still images or moving photographs. But now that I’ve seen it in person, I can say it’s really stunning. It’s regrettably still not that huge. The talking head I spoke to wasn’t nearly a full-size head in size. It was a talking, floating head, though!

Light Field Lab initially made an effort to persuade us that the colorful head was being driven by a sophisticated, interactive AI. But when it asked me if I spelt my name with a “G” or a “J,” which was one of the first questions it asked me, I became immediately skeptical. The interaction was a compelling ruse, despite the fact that that was a little esoteric for a computer.

I find the way it actually operates to be far more impressive. An LFL employee was getting his face drawn and transformed into the vibrant noggin’ we were seeing in another area of the facility, all in real time. Although Wi-Fi was used, the technology could be used with almost any Internet connection. Picture yourself Face Timing with a life-size, 3D hologram of your mother who is standing in your room. I’m hoping she won’t be able to see how disorganized it is.

The holographic future

These holograms won’t be a commonplace technology for a few more years. The modules’ pixel density are an order of magnitude higher than that of normal displays, which is one factor. Millions of pixels make up a 4K TV. Numerous billions of these displays. To make each of those pixels accomplish what Light Field Lab requires them to do in order to produce the hologram, they need a tremendous amount of processing power. Not to mention Phase Guide, the “secret sauce” that enables you to perceive those pixels as a hologram.

This is more than just a cool Silicon Valley tech demonstration. Most recently, a $50 million Series B round of funding led by South Korean game company NCSOFT was invested in as a result of it from many large corporations. They join a real who’s who of tech companies, including Verizon, Bosch, Comcast, Corning, Gates Frontier, LG and Samsung (how often do you see those two together?).

Wall-sized holograms in movies and amusement parks, theater-sized projections for a new (ahem) dimension in entertainment, and perhaps one day the Holodeck experience we’ve long desired are all possibilities.