#10: Holograms Reacting to the World — Part 2 (Gravity)

Holograms not only react to light from the real world. Hologram hackers around the world have also started to experiment with ways to make the lightfields bumping around the walls of a Looking Glass react to other influences, like gravity and real world position.

In a demonstration at a Tokyo Looking Glass Study Group meeting, an accelerometer and Arduino built into the back of this Looking Glass gave it a new capability: “you tilt the glass, the direction of gravity turns to the ground and the girl walks”.

In the same vein, in this widely-shared example by Lee Vermeulen a Vive tracker is added to the top of his Looking Glass, giving the holographic blocks inside a sense of the physical world outside. While some members interwebs may object that this is a case of the Looking Glass reacting to position and orientation via the Vive tracker rather than gravity, the end result is nonetheless remarkable.

And here’s an oldie but goodie. Our own Evan Kahn hacked the Nintendo Joy-Con and added it to this Looking Glass demo by Oliver Garcia-Borg to give the app a way to sense of the surrounding world. The dancing cigar-smoking guy inside never has forgiven Evan for this.

The Joy-Con library for Unity used in this app is available here.

Next up, #11: Experimental Storytelling

*this is part of our “100 Days of Holograms” series, where Missy Senteio and Shawn Frayne of Looking Glass Factory post one new wonderful or weird (or both!) use for the Looking Glass holographic display each day.