The Hollagram Selfie Booth Shows How Close We Are to Functional Holograms

Walking, talking, life-size holograms aren't just for staging Hatsune Miku concerts and reviving Tupac, Michael Jackson, and other fallen stars.

Holographic technology company VNTANA hacked the Microsoft Kinect to simplify the creation of life-size, 3D projections. For example, you can give a presentation with your holographic self, like in the video below.

Or, doctors can use the technology to have in-person visits with a patient on the other side of the world as a hologram like the example here:

Ashley Crowder and Ben Conway founded VNTANA after hacking a Microsoft Kinect to create a holographic, augmented reality photo booth called Hollagram. You've probably seen some of their work online, or even in person in virtual concerts. It's impressive such life-like holograms can exist and function at all, but when you consider that this is done with a sub-$100 gaming accessory it seems practically unreal.

But it's not. VNTANA uses the Kinect's existing feature set to identify the human it sees and isolate that person from the background. With clever coding they're able to transfer the abstracted video of the human subject and project it as a hologram in another location.

VNTANA/YouTube

Although undeniably impressive, none of these technologies really help you experience becoming a hologram yourself. To bring the technology a bit closer to the consumer level, VNTANA created the Hollagram Selfie Booth where you stand in front of it, let the Kinect scan you, and then watch your holographic image projected inside of a box right before your eyes.

VNTANA created this fun holographic toy for a party so, sadly, it's not something you or I could go find and try out for ourselves just yet. Nevertheless, we're coming closer and closer to functional holograms entering our regular life. Love it or hate it, at least we'll soon finally say goodbye to those creepy plastic projections of people in the mall.

For more VNTANA's holographic and AR experiences, check out their blog.

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Cover image via VNTANA/YouTube