The Looking Glass Is Set to Turn How We Interact with the Digital World Upside Down

We all know the tale of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland — the novel of Lewis Carroll, in which the protagonist, Alice, is drawn into a magical world that almost defies belief — one where things are not as they seem, or on occasion, are far far more than they initially appear.

With something akin to a collection of references to mind altering substances, this popular work of fiction has a seldom less seen sequel — aptly named for our purposes — "Through the Looking Glass."

In this followup to the first story, Alice is once again whisked away to wonderland, only this time to find things somewhat upside down — a perversion of inversion where up is down and right is wrong. The looking glass serves to completely turn the world upside down.

Perhaps there's some poetic influence in the name chosen by the Looking Glass — a company who we've seen bring some significant advances in the field of super stereoscopic display screen technology in recent years.

Indeed, as was the effect of the looking glass upon Wonderland, the Looking Glass look set to turn volumetric display industry upside down — with their long teased, innovative volumetric display technology finally finding its route to customers who maybe want to interact with volumetric display — here in the real world, not needing to hulk a HoloLens around on their head.

First up, you should probably see what all the fuss is about...

First and foremost is the distinction that must be made — this isn't some simple optical illusion. The illusion is independent of the angle of observation, as can be seen from the real-time 3D data being displayed in the above GIF.

Visual trickery vs. optical wizardry

A fun weekend project is to possibly recycle a few old Ryan Adams CD cases, into a pyramid of sorts — one that puts into practice the principle behind the famous Pepper's Ghost illusion.

Practiced by practically every haunted house attraction to have heard of it, you can pull off a very limited volumetric display with some old scrap CD cases and some cyanoacrylate.

Pepper's Ghost is practically pretty limited, though.

With viewing angles visibly restricted, and a limited visible volumetric area that defined by that of the various viable bits of suitable plastic, you can find to glue together... It's not a practical peripheral for interaction, but it's a fun demonstration of some the physics at work here.

If there were only some way to remove the dependance that many holographic displays have on a specified, direct viewing angle. Much like many an optical illusion, volumetric and holographic displays alike are cofounded by a limited, sometimes single angle of observation, from which the illusion is visible toto the user..

Like many a photo that factors in the effect of forced perspective, many existing holographic displays have a somewhat limited application in that they require the user to be looking at them from a certain angle.

If only there was a way to get around that limitation...

Speaking of lenses in particular, have you heard of one named Lenticular?

You might have seen at one point in time some playing cards — top trumps or that sort of type — with a ridged texture, that would transform visually when tilted against the angle of light that shone upon them.

This trick of light is made possible due to Lenticular printing, where a series of images are sectioned, sliced and set beneath a linear set of lenses, formed onto the same optical face.

With physically formed lenses either etched, embossed or enacted by other means — applied to the substrate that sits above the segmented image, a relationship between the angle of incidence of the viewer and the printed, lensed image itself is formed.

The image below, taken from the patent describing the technology that ties all this together, illustrates the how the principle of the lenticular lens can be exploited — and enhanced — to create more and more distinct images, the visibility of each being dependent on the location of the viewer.

Fig5B shows us two images, one visible at each angle of incidence.

Fig5A, shows three possible fields of view. Now, scale that up several times to double digits densities.

If we dig a little deeper into the documentation and the diagrams that detail this display technology, we see how the second dimension is achieved, allowing for the visual effect to appear truly convincing to the observer. This is truly some very clever and creative use of the practical opportunities offered by modern microfabrication methods.

With the ability to create the many individual images that each field of view would reveal in a 3D scene, and the ability to dynamically change the data — as opposed to printed pixels on those trading cards we had as kids. This innovation means that it doesn't matter how you look at the display — it's going to have the visual effect no matter from which angle you view it.

With this innovative arrangement of microfabricated, laser etched optical elements coupled with the recently available computing technologies that can crucially, calculate, and compensate the distortion encountered as the photons pass through the the convoluted optical path, this fusion of technologies finally makes 3D displays feasible.

With some tantalizing tidbits in the text of the patent touching on the topic of electrostatic actuated optical elements - suggesting that the system has the "potential" to be tweaked on the fly — giving the critical third axis of optical actuation in order to perhaps allow them to focus on foreseeable issues such as depth of field — one possible limitation of the optical system described, if not for such additional innovation.

No longer the fiction of sci-fi, you can finally reach out and fumble with the 3D model from all angles.

Linked in with a Leap Motion controller in the loop above, you can see that this is a convincingly tangible interface — given its purely virtual. One criticism of such HMI applications like these is the lack of physical feedback — but with our eyes and optical neurons having advanced so far, we can deal pretty well with convincing optical feedback, as seen above.

This really is a very clever culmination of a combination of optical technologies, composited in a way that creates the illusion of depth with convincing effect.

Relax, this isn't a research project.

The Looking Glass has been catching the eye of many of us since it started making some subtle appearances as far back as 2016!

Making waves at the much missed by many Maker Faire meetups, many mused that it must have been some bluff, a Blender based animation or such. But no, the tech is real, and it's no longer resigned to the realms of Wonderland. It's ready for your welcoming reception!

With a Kickstarter campaign that has quite unquestionably achieved its funding requirements, the Looking Glass Portrait is looking like it's going to be the focus of many feature projects to follow here, having met its funding goals some 20 times over, with 42 days remaining for you to get your name on the list of people preparing to get their paws on this phenomenal piece of optical physics.