Holograms are fit for the home according to Musion
The holographic video projection system which has given a new lease of life to figures including Frank Sinatra, Elvis and Tupac, could eventually find its way into the home, believes the director of the company which holds its patent writes Adrian Pennington
James Rock, Director of UK-based Musion said: “As technologies such as high resolution projection reaches a much broader market and the price comes down, more and more people and businesses will use our technology. Ultimately it could end up as a consumer product, not on the scale of Eyeliner, but similar to an aquarium-sized system in the home.”
Eyeliner is Musion’s professional system which has sets starting from 2m3 cubes and projected images ranging from 50cm square, up to a massive 20m x 100m.
It’s conceivable that home users would be able to produce their own content or even to beam a virtual friend or relative in from across the world in a form of 3D telepresence.
“It took about eight weeks to produce the content for the recent Tupac event [California's Coachella festival in April where a virtual Tupac joined Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg on stage] and even that is a lot quicker than we were able to do previously for such a complex production,” explains Rock. “As long as the processing power of computers improves then the speed of content creation will also advance.”
This summer Musion is launching The Musion Academy hosted at Central Saint Martins college to encourage fine art students to understand how to process and create holographic projected content.
“Knowledge of 3D animation, camera techniques or lighting programming is helpful but not necessary,” says Rock.
Musion has already reworked the system into a corporate communication telepresence tool where live, remote transmissions are delivered as a holographic presence at another location via high-bandwidth fibre.
“One of our latest developments is to provide the opportunity for politicians to deliver speeches from one location to reach multiple audiences at another, live and with a realistic full body and full gesture presence that they are until now unable to do,” says Rock.
Musion’s patented technique is an updated version of the Pepper's Ghost invented in the Victorian era. It works by placing thin metallised film across the front of a stage at an angle of 45 degrees towards the audience. Below the screen is a high-brightness image supplied by an LED screen or projector which reflects the illusion of life-size 3D moving holograms onstage.
To register for the Musion Academy click here.
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