touchable 3d holograms

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Remember all those sci-fi movies where characters grab and manipulate 3D holograms floating in mid-air?

Iron Man swiping through holographic interfaces, Star Wars characters watching miniature projections they can walk around? That thing just became real.

Scientists at the Public University of Navarre cracked the code on touchable 3D holograms.

Not the fake "holograms" we've seen before that need special glasses or only work from certain angles.

These are actual 3D images floating in space that you can grab, rotate, and manipulate with your bare hands.

"What we see in films and call holograms are typically volumetric displays," explained Dr. Elodie Bouzbib, who led the research. "These graphics appear in mid-air and can be viewed from various angles without needing VR glasses."

How they pulled it off

Previous volumetric displays used a high-speed rigid diffuser that projects thousands of images per second, creating the illusion of a 3D object floating in air.

The big problem?

If you tried touching these displays, you'd either break the machine or hurt yourself on the rapidly moving parts.

The breakthrough came when the research team replaced these rigid diffusers with elastic ones.

They had to test countless materials to find the perfect balance between flexibility (so it won't hurt you) and optical clarity (so the images still look good)

"Elastic materials deform and require image correction," Bouzbib noted, which is why nobody has done this successfully before.

The team had to develop entirely new image processing techniques to account for how the elastic diffuser warps and moves when touched.

The display shows 2,880 images per second - way too fast for your eye to process individually, so you just see one seamless 3D object floating there. And since there are no special glasses required, multiple people can use it simultaneously.

What can you do with it?

In demos, users pinched and moved 3D cubes, "walked" their fingers through virtual landscapes, and rotated detailed anatomical models by grabbing them between their thumb and index finger.

Unlike touchscreens that limit you to 2D interactions, these volumetric displays let you manipulate objects exactly as you would in real life.

Want to rotate that 3D skull to examine the eye socket? Just grab it and turn it.

This is huge for education, especially for teaching complex 3D concepts. Imagine medical students examining detailed anatomical models, engineers collaborating on 3D parts, or museum visitors interacting with historical artifacts without special training or equipment.

Why this matters now

What makes this particularly exciting is that it doesn't require any wearable tech. no clunky VR headsets, no special gloves - just walk up and start interacting.

This "come-and-interact" approach means this technology could appear in public spaces where putting on specialized equipment isn't practical.

• museums could let visitors manipulate 3D artifacts

• collaborative workspaces could have floating 3D models everyone can modify together

• classrooms could have interactive 3D visualizations that students can literally get their hands on.

If you had the power to interact with holograms just like in sci-fi movies, what would YOU do with it?

Think of all the possibilities - get creative and reply (we’ll feature the most mind-blowing ideas!)

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