Sick, but a bit unnecessary. Definitely sick though.

yeah i was looking into that for a project i was doing but the price just wasn't worth it....

dark magic!

defiantly has it advantages, but not a physical model replacement.

peedy, how much did they cost?
if u can pay someone 10-20g for a physical model, the holographic version should not cost more than 1/3-1/4 of that.

yeah, i wonder if they are re-usable, in case you want to update your design and need to re-render, do you have to buy a new piece of board again?

They will probably sell those kind of printers in the future, so thats how all the presentation prints will be done in arch-firms in 10-20 years from now...

Well the thing is if i remember right...

And this is where things get absolutely HILARIOUS.

A holographic image is usually made from physical model.

A hologram is made by an object getting "scanned" by a coherent light beam (a laser).

Complex holography requires multiple beam splits and even multiple lasers. Now these can be record or duplicated onto a "master hologram" once initial recording occurs.

However, the initial first hologram is the most expensive.

I'm sure you could fake it, but it would require a pretty awesome computer set up to fake both the reference laser and the object refraction light. That'd require you to invest full computer power in rendering a 360 degree view of an image at more than 30 frames a second at a minimum of 20-30 mega pixels per frame.

Add on top of all of this, that a hologram that size costs between 3000-5000 dollars.

Isn't this technology from the 80's or something? I feel like I remember getting hologram baseball cards in my breakfast cereal.

gimmick alert!

i'll wait around for Volumetric Displays

Coop Himmelb(l)au used a holographic model in their exhibit at Sci-Arc last year (or was it two years ago?)

That there is some kinda devil voodoo magic mojo. How they do that?

you can't replace a physical model...... that hologram looked a bit 'cartoonish' for my taste

is that a 'true' hologram? it looks more like a super-high resolution lenticular lens.

still cool.

I'm familiar with this technology- it's not a lenticular, but a true hologram made with a difraction grating in a piece of film.
But they don't make them from a physical model - they use your computer models and they cost between 1 and 2,000.
It does represent some pretty amazing computation though, as far as I understand it they render thousands of views in a couple of hours and then put them in the film via the aformentioned voodoo magic (i.e. diffrection grating).

I was underimpressed. Its basically taking a still rendering like any other and putty on some 3D glasses. and because off the odd coloration and what-not, i think its almost less informative than a still rendering!

If you could move around the hologram and see it from different angles, that would be awesome, but you can't. You can only really see it when you are looking directly perpendicular to the plane. (you can see this in the video).

Right -- that's why they offer two formats: a plan-view "model" that is presented flat, and an easel-mounted (more-or-less vertical) one for elevational views. At least that's what I saw. . .

would be more interesting to use it for facade or flooring^^

when i read "hologram" i pictured a floating model that you could actually walk around...

Yeah - it should buzz or hum or something, and be projected from a puck on the floor -- or maybe a nice coffee table (included). I mean, really. . .