James Brown's Latest 3D Display Is Real Smoke and Mirrors — Or Fog and Mirrors, At Least

Maker James Brown is back with another impressive 3D display, and this time it's as close as you can get to an actual sci-fi hologram: a 3D projection floating unsupported in a blanket of fog.

"Projecting a 3D scene into a fog volume to produce a floating stereo image," Brown writes of the latest in what he has come to call the "Janky Display Device" series. "The image brightness falls off quickly as the viewpoint moves out of line with the source. This means that by arranging multiple projections around the volume, the correct perspective view dominates. 3D projection is an improvement over a normal fog screen."

The inspiration for James' creation is clear: the classic sci-fi hologram, in which a hazy figure floats unsupported in mid-air — and in clear 3D, with the viewer able to walk around to see the projection from any angle. It's not something we've figured out how to do in real life, with the closest being to give a projection something off which to bounce: fog.

That's exactly how Brown's display works: a fine spray of water droplets from an atomizer originally intended for use in a small humidifier provides an ephemeral projection surface for light beamed from a projector. Where a two-dimensional display would use one projector and a multi-view display would use many, though, Brown's display has only one projector and uses mirrored acrylic lenses to bounce multiple views of the scene into the fog from different angles — delivering on the sci-fi promise of a holographic projection you can walk around.

This is far from Brown's only somewhat-impractical but undeniably-impressive display: previous and ongoing projects have included high-speed rotary volumetric displays that can track the viewer, solid-state 3D displays, (ab)using an LCD panel to create "animated bokeh" in camera footage, and making the LEGO computer brick real — to the point of being able to play id Software's 1993 classic first-person shooter Doom.

The project is documented in full in the video above and on Brown's YouTube channel.