Tech by VICE

You Can't Be In Two Places At Once, But Your Hologram Can

Move over, floo powder.

by Madison Margolin
Nov 17 2016, 2:17pm

Now you can be in two places at once—sort of. Holoportation allows people to virtually teleport from one place to another in real time, while interacting with people around the hologram as if they were both actually present. The only thing you can't do with a hologram is highfive them.

In this YouTube video by Microsoft Research, former partner research manager Shahram Izadi, demonstrated and explained how holoportation works. It uses 3D capture technology, in which the subject is surrounded by 3D cameras capturing them from different viewpoints. The data fuses together to create a "temporally consistent model" of the real-life subject.

The cameras filming the subject have a hololens tracking system, which takes 3D models and composites them in real time in the real world. On the other side of the equation, people can see "remote participants" as a hologram live in the space as if they weren't several feet or several thousands of miles away from each other.

The system can also record and playback sessions, allowing something of a time capture for people to look at later as if they're reversing through time. It's like "walking into a living memory," said Izadi.

That's the point of holoportation, he said. Eventually people will be able to use it to holoport to anyplace with anyone, at any time.


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