Microsoft builds a functioning ‘holodesk’ to interact with digital items
I’m a real sucker for this sort of thing. I actually constructed a setup like this a while ago after Bill Buxton suggested the idea when he spoke at Artefact. I only had the glass reflection/holograph effect going (I didn’t do the object detection or head tracking shown in this video).
My idea was to make a fun typing tutor for my kids where the letters would drop onto their corresponding keys (super imposed over the keyboard itself) like bugs and would squish and pop when you pressed the key. The one thing that you can’t see in video is that the image floats in space, but is not stereoscopic (unless you go the extra step and use a stereoscopic screen with 3d glasses – which would also be a good way to track the head position). Even without a stereo image, it’s pretty convincing because the brain seems to compensate.
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)