Okay, so here’s the scoop—a bunch of brainiacs from Meta and Stanford, you know, the kind that probably enjoyed math way too much, have whipped up this newfangled holographic thingamajig. Imagine blending VR and reality but all crammed into glasses. Normal ones! Not those clunky headsets. Don’t ask me how they did it, but it’s all detailed in the fancy-pants journal Nature Photonics. Apparently, this gizmo uses some kind of ultra-thin waveguide holography. Whatever that means, right?
Anyway, Gordon Wetzstein—he’s one of those smart professor types—chatted about this prototype. It’s got AI-driven gobbledegook that makes 3D stuff pop like never before. They’re calling it a mixed reality display ’cause, unlike HoloLens and Magic Leap, this isn’t see-through. So, don’t get your hopes up about walking around town in Iron Man mode.
Now, here’s the kicker—they stacked this thing at just 3 millimeters thick! With a custom thingy called a Spatial Light Modulator or SLM. That’s supposed to do something impressive with light fields. Kind of like magic.
Hold the phone—been rambling. Back on track! Traditional headsets fake depth with images that are flatter than Kansas. But this new system? Wham! Real holograms are popping up. Wetzstein says this is something no other display can do in a package so teeny-tiny.
Oh, and get this, you can move your eyes around and the picture doesn’t go all fuzzy on you. That’s apparently a big deal.
Why haven’t we seen these doohickeys before? Blame étendue, a word I totally did not just make up. It’s this geeky concept that mentions how light spreads out or something. The problem has been crammed tech space paired with limited étendue.
Now this thing isn’t ready for prime-time sale yet. It’s the second part of some trilogy deal. First, a waveguide, then the prototype. Commercial product is somewhere in the future. Can’t help but picture Wetzstein rubbing a crystal ball and peering at the future hopefully.
They say they’re closing in on passing the “Visual Turing Test.” Sounds like a sci-fi movie, but basically means you won’t tell real and digital apart through these spiffy glasses. Suyeon Choi, the paper’s big cheese, talked about that.
In the meantime, folks at Meta’s Reality Labs are showing off wide-view headsets. Not to be confused with these glasses though—they rely on high-curvature shiny bits, not the waveguides.
It’s like we’re on the brink of the Jetsons age. Or maybe it’ll turn out like one of those hoverboard promises. Who knows?
