Looking Glass has since 2014 been working to bring holographic display into regular consumer use. Now the Brooklyn-based company thinks it’s found the killer app to make that happen: Looking Glass Go, a pocket-sized display that has a $300 MSRP for June 2024 delivery and features a six-inch screen and built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to enable receipt of “holograms from the cloud.” The Looking Glass Go allows you to “shoot instant spatial photos with your phone” and view them as holograms — “including holographic AIs you can customize, powered by ChatGPT,” the company says.

“After shipping tens of thousands of the world’s first generation of holographic displays, we’ve come up with something that will finally bring holograms to everyone,” the company writes in a post on Kickstarter, where as of press time it had raised more than $404,000, exceeding its fundraising goal of $50,000 with 39 days to go.

Preorders through Kickstarter are priced at $199 for the display alone and $249 for a bundle including a battery pack and carrying pouch.

“We’ve been following Looking Glass for years — it’s one of the few startups dedicated to building 3D displays where digital objects appear to live inside or leap off the screen,” writes The Verge, detailing the Looking Glass Go’s six-inch screen,  “the first one small enough to fit in your pocket — though you’ll need to plug in USB-C power or an optional external USB-C battery dongle.”

It’s a considerable evolution from 2020’s 7.9-inch “desktop” model, the $349 Looking Glass Portrait, which also debuted on Kickstarter. “The six-inch screen should have substantially higher pixel density than its 7.9-inch predecessor, despite being 10x thinner, according to the firm.

The new resolution is 1440 x 2560 (491ppi), versus the prior 1536 x 2048 (325ppi), The Verge explains, noting that perceived clarity “depends on other factors.” Looking Glass says the Go offers 58-degree viewing angles from as many as 100 different perspectives, the same as the 7.9-inch model.

“Like most autostereoscopic screens, the Looking Glass doesn’t beam a 3D image everywhere simultaneously,” The Verge explains, noting that viewers’ eyes must be positioned at specific angles relative to the screen to experience the hologram properly. “That’s why some volumetric displays, including 2014’s New Nintendo 3DS, include face tracking, though face tracking can be less desirable when you want to show a screen to multiple people at once,” The Verge adds.

In addition to turning “characters generated by ChatGPT into vivid, lifelike holographic projections,” users can use Looking Glass Go for “the 3D transformation of 2D photos, spatial images captured by Luma AI, and spatial art into realistic 3D holograms,” VentureBeat reports, adding that the experiences can be shared “anywhere, anytime, and without the need for VR or AR headsets.”

“Two major trends are converging: 3D spatial platforms and generative AI,” Looking Glass CEO Shawn Frayne said on VentureBeat, echoing the Go’s Kickstarter page. “Fueled by Apple’s announcement of the Vision Pro, the spatial photo capabilities in the iPhone 15, and the prevalence of 3D game engines and more powerful GPUs, spatial platforms are on the rise.”