{"id":1652,"date":"2019-07-21T00:11:50","date_gmt":"2019-07-21T00:11:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mnemonic.studio\/memo\/?p=1652"},"modified":"2019-07-21T00:13:15","modified_gmt":"2019-07-21T00:13:15","slug":"the-looking-glass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mnemonic.studio\/memo\/the-looking-glass\/","title":{"rendered":"The Looking Glass"},"content":{"rendered":"

Looking Glass Factory’s latest display combines new and old technologies to achieve glasses-free 3D.<\/h4>\n

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Looking Glass Factory is an interesting firm devoted to the future of three-dimensional display technology. I’ve purchased a few of their devices over the years via Kickstarter; the first, the L3D Cube<\/a>, was a volumetric, low-resolution lighting array – nicely designed, but a bit more of a DJ effect than a functional display. Volume<\/a>, a few years later, projected images onto a stack of clear surfaces, presenting true glasses-free 3D at the expense of both resolution and image quality. By the time I unboxed Volume, the firm had moved on to yet another product, the HoloPlayer One<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The firm’s latest offering, eponymously titled the Looking Glass<\/a>, takes a different approach, and initial reviews indicated that it was a big step forward from previous models, at a surprisingly reasonable price. Here are my first impressions:<\/p>\n

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Unboxing<\/h4>\n

The device comes in a small carrying case, packaged simply with USB and HDMI cables. I opted for the smaller, 8.9″ model, which looks roughly like an iPad with a solid block of prismatic material fixed to the front of its screen, making it a hefty 4.8 pounds (the larger, 15.6″ version comes in at nearly 20 lbs). The device sits at a slight angle on its metallic frame, which incorporates four navigation buttons, making the device suitable for simple standalone applications. I chose an option that bundled in a Leap Motion<\/a> controller, as the display itself doesn’t incorporate touch functionality.<\/p>\n

\"Looking<\/a><\/p>\n

The device is powered via USB; once connected to my laptop, the display immediately sprang to life, mirroring my desktop wallpaper. There are no drivers to download – the computer sees the device as a standard display.<\/p>\n

I downloaded a quick test application from the device website, which displayed some basic 3D shapes on the Looking Glass. The effect was impressive – I was able to peer at the display from different angles and view the objects from different perspectives – but I wanted to see how well it worked with animation and interactivity.<\/p>\n

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Applications<\/h4>\n

To start, I downloaded an app library from Looking Glass that offers easy installation of roughly 60 free demo programs. At this point, my laptop began overheating and became less responsive, so I switched to a more robust desktop. The specs for the display suggest a powerful dedicated GPU – and Macs are not recommended.<\/p>\n

A handful of the apps were animations with light interactivity – these seem well suited to the device’s ‘digital photo frame’ form factor. There were at least three different virtual aquarium apps; others were demos of 3D shaders and particle effects, while a few featured high quality linear animations. Of these, Sylvia Apostol’s Bubblegum Rabbit<\/a>, with its pre-rendered, soft-lit character animations, was the most impressive. <\/p>\n

\"Voxatron\"<\/a>There were quite a few games; my favorites were those that truly took advantage of the display’s dimensionality in their gameplay. Avoider<\/em> is simple and dumb: move a character around the screen to avoid mines and oil barrels falling from the sky. Presented in a top-down view, this felt really connected to the depth of the display, and immersed me to the point where the objects seemed to fill my field of vision. <\/p>\n

My favorite of the games was Voxatron<\/a>, a simulated voxel gaming system (complete with virtual game cartridges). Its minigames were simple variants on Robotron<\/em>, presented in an cute low-fi style, with color and imagination. Voxatron <\/em>was developed for 2D displays, but its fixed-perspective levels worked nicely within the Looking Glass’ physical constraints.<\/p>\n

The library includes a few potentially useful utilities; a photo app allows the import and display of light-field photography<\/a>, while a digital model importer allows for quick viewing of 3D assets. <\/p>\n

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