Mint Primer: Beam me up, Scotty... into the boardroom

livemint.com:

Google’s long-term experiment to create a science fiction-like 3D, holographic ultra-realistic display is now a real product. After many failures, is Silicon Valley’s quest to build screens that look like teleportation portals finally nearing promise? In development for at least five years, it is a video conferencing system on steroids. It uses a 3D light-field display to create a holographic, 3D image of people appearing on the screen.

This makes people and objects look ultra-real—like they are in the same room. Image sensors placed around the display capture objects in more than two dimensions, and real-time 3D modelling enables the hologram-like visuals. Mint was shown a demo of Starline at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California.

By the next year, it will start being rolled out to companies in partnership with HP. One of the biggest challenges to video conferencing systems is in the technology itself. While it is functional, companies have so far failed to take it beyond a 2D visual experience, thereby making interactions look basic.

Google now hopes for companies to adopt its Starline video conferencing system in boardrooms to make collaboration across remote teams feel more realistic. This can help teams better collaborate on visual design through ultra-realistic 3D imaging. The company will roll it out with its own platform Meet, and is also working with Zoom for it.

As of now though, don’t even think of smartphones. Microsoft Holoportation, like Starline, used 3D imaging to create 3D images of objects, and compressed and transmitted the 3D data between two ends to create a holographic experience. However, instead of a display, Microsoft used its HoloLens mixed reality headset.