Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/09/21/watch-these-3d-jellyfish-holograms-created-with-fans.html
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Not sure I really see a use case for this device - It’s a persistence of vision display intended for retail use, but it needs to be put into a transparent case to render it safe for retail environments and that makes it functionally equivalent to a transparent lcd screen but with a lower resolution. And oh, it’s WiFi enabled. That won’t get hacked and loaded with pr0n as soon as this is installed at Walmart. 
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Guys. Please. You’re better than this.
“Hologram” is not a generic term for “space-filling image.” Holograms are a specific way of capturing light fields and is very much not what we’re talking about here.
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The category of devices is literally called hologram fans, so you need to take your complaint up the chain to the manufacturers. Also, have you ever seen one? They have a parallax effect.
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Some of them do have clear cases, but the effect is diminished IMO. They work well as window displays, which could be secured, but they definitely can’t be out in the open as an endcap or something.
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… ? That’s still not holography.
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I shouldn’t have rubbished your post. POV displays are cool; I built one with my daughter a couple years ago as a “Learn to solder project” (MiniPOV 4 Kit - DIY Full-Color POV and Light Painting Kit [v4.0] : ID 1776 : $24.95 : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits ). I’m surprised things like this haven’t made their way into the world:
I expect that reliability is a big part of it — moving parts and relatively high precision requirements make for an expensive solution.
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Cool! And I didn’t think you rubbished it. What I love is that stuff like this always sees more innovation when released into the wild.
Yeah, it’s tough to record these kinds of things on 2D media in a way that conveys its coolness, in the same way that a photograph of a hologram doesn’t really do it justice.
I was reading an interesting thing the other day about what VR is teaching us about 4D. I love all of these attempts at new forms of visual representation!
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I have to take issue with the “3D” part of this. These fans produce a 2D image while hiding the display surface, there’s no depth effect here at all.
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Two cool videos, but I didn’t see one with jellyfish. Did I miss something?
Also: cool, but not holograms.
and? does that mean you have to repeat their misleading marketing-speak?
in which way? just because it shows rotating 3D-cgi doesnt make it a 3D-screen, its still 2D, pretending to be 3D, because it seems to be without a screen, hanging in midair, but its still a plane and not volumetric like a “real” hologram.
A hologram is a real world recording of an interference pattern which uses diffraction to reproduce a 3D light field, resulting in an image which still has the depth, parallax, and other properties of the original scene
I used to made volumetric lightfield pictures, which in definition could be more accurately called “hologram” than these devices (which are impressive, but nevertheless shouldnt called hologram, because they aint, its “just” an “invisible” screen in 2D):
yes, I made these.
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that is a volumetric display; can show just a sphere, but it is volumetric, because its a sphere with real stereo-parallax and not a circle which simply displays a rotating earth, like those “holographic” fans would show.
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I’m interested in your volumetric lightfield pictures. Can you point me at information about the process?
Those large floor-to ceiling pieces you did on the long walls are especially impressive! I really felt the 3D effect looking at those two!
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I stumbled 2003(?) over a pdf from a lenticular-sheet-making company, “theHistoryOfLenticular”, which I asume is now well known. they made a website of it, the method I use is in principle described in part II here:
that little part was what hooked me; the lensarrays are homemade with epoxy-resin, the matrix for those are made of arragend steelballs (silicone-resin for the mold inbetween), pics printed with 2000-5000 dpi with epson-printer and pigment-ink, glued with epoxy directly on lensarray.
content made with homemade 3d-scanner(s) and/or photogramtrie, rendered through virtual lensarray in blender and/or 3dmax.
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thank you 
dont want to sound self-assertive, but its really like looking trough a window; the running gag is people trying to look behind the pics to find the hole in the wall.
edit/ there more in the channel.
These aren’t hoverboards either but what are you going to do?
shrugs slightly
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“hoverboards” were fictional before the term was used for them. /killjoymodeoff
Oh yeah? You’re fictional, bucko!
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