Display Technology

From Baby Yoda to retail, Looking Glass aims for hologram revolution

In an exclusive interview with Digital Signage Today, Looking Glass CEO Shawn Frayne discusses how the company seeks to revolutionize hologram displays with haptic, 3D anamorphic technologies, including major test cases like promotional displays for Disney's "The Mandalorian."

Provided by Looking Glass.

January 3, 2023 by Daniel Brown — Editor, Networld Media Group

Image provided by Looking Glass.

Shawn Frayne has been chasing holograms since he was a kid. "I got hooked when I was seven or eight and I saw that shark gobble up Marty McFly in 'Back to the Future 2.' Who knows why something grabs a little kid's imagination? But from then on, it was you know, holograms or bust."

The quest led him to study physics at MIT, and in over two decades working in the field, Frayne has been supported by his vision of the market potential for the technology. "You know, we're surrounded by two-dimensional screens, and our brain has started to kind of filter them out," Frayne said. "There's a lot of opportunity in holograms for the digital signage and out-of-home market."

While the firm initially focused on desktop holographic displays, in 2022 they announced a 65-inch, large-format holographic display. "And when I say holographic display, what I mean is this is something that lets a group of people without having without them having to gear up in a VR headset and see something in 3D," Frayne explained. The firm's unique approach to the problem of holograms involves a pivot from the traditional headset solutions and a focus on creating screens where images project out of the display towards a viewer.

This comes at a moment when increased media buzz about the metaverse has drawn more attention to augmented and mixed reality. "You know, but the reason that people the reason folks have fixated on AR and VR and all of these things is because I think everyone senses that there is a shift underway from the 2D displays and the 2D media that we have been consuming for the last 30 or 40 or 50 years to the 3D versions of all of those things," Frayne said.

"But nobody wants to gear up, most of the time, and definitely not in an out-of home-experience. People don't even want to download an app for a mobile AR experience on their phone. They want something instantaneous," he added. "And so Looking Glass is bringing that experience for the first time from the desktop, which is what we've historically done, to the out-of-home market, and we are doing this with big brands and others that have built a huge strategy around 3D for VR and AR headsets, for mobile AR, and they're finding folks just don't want to spend the time to download something or to gear up."

Frayne believes that by liberating users from the need for cumbersome wearable hardware or even software, holograms will be much more accessible to the mainstream, starting with last year's first 65-inch display. "You just look through it like you would be looking through a window into another place or at a product that you might be interacting with and having an experience with," Frayne said.

Provided by Looking Glass.

While some of the early use cases are still under non-disclosure with the clients, Frayne was excited to share that his team worked with actor John Favreau on promotional displays at an event for Disney's "The Mandalorian."

"He wanted to bring the experience of the Mandalorian into this real world in person experience where tens of thousands of fans would be flowing through this space," Frayne said. Featuring artifacts from the show's filming and fan fare like a puppeteered Baby Yoda, Favreau wanted to go a step beyond 2D for the digital content.

"Favreau and his team have had all of these amazing 3D assets that they literally use for production in the Mandalorian," Frayne said. "And with our software and with our hardware, they were able to pull those experiences into the real world and have folks looking through in that case, three 32-inch Looking Glasses and seeing starships, fighters and whatnot. They're living in front of them as if they're looking at of maybe a window of a spaceship."

Whereas 2D digital presents only one angle or viewpoint, or where 3D movies offer only two viewpoints (one for each eye, creating the illusion of binocular 3D vision), the Looking Glass system allows viewers to see target objects from numerous angles. Two viewers standing side by side see different views of the same object, or one viewer would see different angles as they move around the object's screen.

"And the difference between what Looking Glass offers and some of the other folks who are pushing forward in different respects in this kind of broad field of holograms in the out-of-home experience," Frayne said. "Our stuff is actually 3D. And that makes it feel more real than anything else. Some of the other experiences that you're surely going to run across, they are two-dimensional illusions, in some cases, very well-staged two-dimensional illusions. And those guys have done great work. Our unique value that we're adding is by actually having a three-dimensional holographic display that is generating different three-dimensional views without you having to gear up in a VR AR headset."

Frayne said he believes that after the initial delay of early market adoption, this is going to become the norm. "This is something that we think will become a ubiquitous part of the out-of-home landscape because of how similar the form factor is to a regular two-dimensional display (and) how different the experience is, where it is actually delivering the jaw-dropping, stop-in-your-tracks holograms from "Blade Runner" or "Back to the Future 2," he said.

As the digital marketing world and DOOH increasingly obsesses over interactivity, Frayne sees hologram systems like his firm's as having a major edge. "Nerds like me would say it's a real time holographic system. And that means it's not just for photos. It's not just for pre-recorded videos. You can also have fully interactive holographic apps, and you can have a product configurator in it, for instance where you have a shoe or the mechanism of a watch that you might want to explore with your hands in front of the display. That product is living there in front of you and change the color change the different attributes of that product in a way that you never would be able to with a physical product in front of you."

While the display itself is almost identical in form factor to regular 2D displays, Frayne said it requires a foot or two of space in front of it for the presentation effect. "That's where the content lives, where the shoe literally swings out of the display," Frayne said. "You can watch your hands into the light field, into the hologram that's coming out of the display, and it feels as if your hand is going into a shoe — but it's just light. It's not a physical object, but it feels like a physical object," he added, explaining that this is because of how our brains evolved to perceive the 3D world around us.

While the billions poured into headset approaches by Silicon Valley titans generated a lot of press and attention in that direction, Frayne said he believes that will prove to be a temporary trend. "The holy grail of the human-computer interface has been group-viewable holographic, or another technical term is light field display, that lets you see 3D stuff. Full color, fully interactive, living in front of you without having to gear up with your friends and family and colleagues. That's been the holy grail in research. Historically, that's been what's in most movies that paints a positive vision of the future. And it's only over the last seven or eight years that there's been this anomalous situation where everyone is focused only on headset-based approaches."

About Daniel Brown

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Daniel Brown is the editor of Digital Signage Today, a contributing editor for Automation & Self-Service, and an accomplished writer and multimedia content producer with extensive experience covering technology and business. His work has appeared in a range of business and technology publications, including interviews with eminent business leaders, inventors and technologists. He has written extensively on AI and the integration of technology and business strategy with empathy and the human touch. Brown is the author of two novels and a podcaster. His previous experience includes IT work at an Ivy League research institution, education and business consulting, and retail sales and management.