PSP World

Sony Hologram Display Will Blow Your Mind

We know that Sony has pledged significant resources toward developing a mass-market 3D image standard, particularly in the realm of flat-panel technology. But standard TV is not the only place that the company has been researching 3D imagery. On October 22, Sony will reveal a prototype display in Tokyo that comes surprisingly close to emulating the holographic images found in science fiction visions of the future. The display, few details of which are currently available, will be shown on Thursday at the Digital Contents Expo in Tokyo.

A circular device that stands about 30 cm tall and the width of a music CD, the prototype can display images in full 3D, viewable from all sides. We don't yet know how this wizardry works, but we speculate that some combination of flexible OLED technology and mirrors are responsible for the effect. Right now the prototype can display images only in the relatively fuzzy resolution of 128X96 pixels, giving images a ghostly and translucent effect.

Sony expects that the display will eventually be used for things like advertising in public areas, medical visualization, or in the home to display 3D photos and other images. There is not yet any talk of gaming applications, but the potential has our mouths watering. Imagine a future PSP shaped like a snow globe, in which images were conjured up in full 3D, with users controlling the action with touch input from the outside. Sony has already said that it intends to build 3D support into its PlayStation 3 games console, Vaio laptop computers and its Blu-ray movie players.

It may look like a coffee machine, but Sony's new 3D display has major potential to change the technology industry.