Impressed with Tupac at Coachella? Try viewing some real holograms
Posted on Mon, Jun 18, 2012 @ 02:30 PM
Zebra Imaging was featured in an article by Omar Gallaga in the Austin American Statesman. You can also learn more on Omar's blog.
Impressed with Tupac at Coachella? Try viewing some real holograms
Hologram Tupac Shakur, you are no hologram.
To backtrack a bit: Back in April, a surprise guest performed at the Coachella Music Festival alongside Snoop Dogg. The ghostly visage of rapper Tupac Shakur, who died in 1996, was somehow on stage performing. Hologram Tupac went viral, suddenly opening up a whole world of possibilities for live performance and bringing the word "hologram" back into the realm of the cool and the possible.
The only problem? The visual wasn't really a hologram. Instead, it was a very old projector-and-mirror optical illusion called "Pepper's ghost." While the company Digital Domain employed some 3-D magic in creating the computer-generated video, the image shown to the crowd was strictly 2-D. The misconception even prompted an amusing correction in the Los Angeles Times after Coachella: "The image was two-dimensional and thus not a hologram."
If you want real 3-D holograms, though, look no further than Austin's Zebra Imaging, a company that's been developing holographic technology since it started in 1996.
Eric Doane, a spokesman for the company who specializes in its work with defense and intelligence clients, says the renewed interest in holograms — even things that are incorrectly called holograms — has not been unwelcome.
"Regardless if it's considered a hologram or not, we like the attention," Doane said.
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