Whatever became of holography? (2011)

Dan Smalley's research lab at BYU is actively developing 3D volumetric holography technology.https://youtu.be/N12i_FaHvOUThe video is a bit old, but it has a few fun demos of the capabilities they've developed. reply: Strictly speaking that's not holography if I understood it correctly. Holography is based on interference created by a surface with a special pattern, and it doesn't require any matter other than the diffractive surface. Whereas here they say they move "particles" (what particles? dust? atoms?). Still pretty cool of course and a thing on its own.

I wanted to pick up doing holography again, but I discovered that Integraf, founded by legend TJ ( https://www.integraf.com/about/tung-h-jeong ), stopped selling the film and supplies.Much of the supply chain for modern hobbyist holography was sourced out of Russia, and the ongoing wars have made those materials unavailable.There are some newer processes out there, but there were probably thousands of us that grew up using those HoloKit holography kits distributed by TJ. reply: You can get holographic film and kits from http://www.litiholo.com. These are not silver halide but are Covestro Bayfol HX photopolymer film which require no post processing.

There are a few of us around who still make them. I do film photography and have my own darkroom already for that purpose. Adding holography on top of that is a relatively minor lift, and every once in a while the urge strikes and I'll get the equipment out.The main challenge is that there are, to my knowledge, only two remaining manufacturers of the plates - in France, and in Russia.

Oof, there's a pretty impressive startup in the space: https://lookingglassfactory.com/

I went to a whole art exhibition of holograms as a kid that blew me away, and I've always wondered why holograms are so rare ever since. I had one for a while, the famous one of the microsope with the lens that you can actually look through to see a computer chip inside. There's nothing else like it. reply: Maybe if you could figure out a digital work flow with digital development method it could really take off. But holograms are analog and hard to deal with.

I had the opportunity to work with a lenticular display a few years back. Just takes an HDMI input and can render a 3d scene like you'd build in Unity and you'd be able to see at least a range of aspects of the image at once by looking from different angles. Not fully 360 but maybe 90 degrees of perspective at once. It was neat but we spent weeks trying to make an impressive demo and none of it was fun for more than 5 seconds.

3blue1brown’s video on holography is one of the coolest math videos I’ve ever seen. Basically magic. reply: https://www.3blue1brown.com/lessons/holograms/

I remember seeing an article in OMNI Magazine decades ago about "holographic data storage" which would have been incredibly high-density.Not sure what became of it.NYC also used to have the "Museum of Holography" which I was fortunately able to visit but may not exist anymore.3D stuff, in general, seems to not do well. Not sure why! (as I dust off my Vision Pro) reply: I went to New York’s Museum of Holography in the 1980’s. It was on Mercer Street but it closed in the 90’s. I remember it was incredible, though, and I saw some techniques on display that I haven’t seen matched since.

There's a phenomenal book on this topic called "Holographic Visions" (ISBN 978-0198571223).I've had the pleasure of working behind the scenes on holography related stuff (primarily optomechanics) for years now. Fascinating field full of phenomenally interesting minds.

The touchable holograms, “fairy lights” seems to have not advanced at all, perhaps a dead end, but when I first read about it and thought of the possibilities it was all utterly amazing.

There used to be a hologram art gallery in San Francisco where you could get a hologram of yourself created.https://computerchronicles.tv/#episode/1610 (Video, skip to 11:47)

Widely used in commercial and military weapons sights.. EOTech (famous/infamous depending). The legendary FN (Belgian military contractor) just announced one.

Monochromatic laser light makes these things look other-worldly. They look amazing and they look increadible, but its not even close to uncanny valley it's so unreal.

I got to make one during a visit to the MIT museum maybe 25 years ago, was neat.

They always felt gimmicky to me, like something out of a kid's museum, and I imagine I'm not the only one.Its this odd often blurry and hard to see thing that certainly has interesting aspects but is not something you can create easily at home, unlike a photograph. Then the world changed and mobile devices ruled and everyone had a good camera sensor in their pocket, TVs were thinner and higher resolution than ever, games started looking amazing, etc and there really wasn't any room for less practical things like holograms.I think its one of those things we just weirdly romanticize like a car that is also a boat or a jetpack, but in reality has no real place as a consumer product.