As useful as Google Hangouts and Skype are for staying in touch, the screens that divide people while chatting remain a barrier to intimate conversation. Getting us one step closer to more realistically imitating the familiarity of an in-person encounter, researchers at Queen’s University have invented a life-sized, 3-D video conferencing pod that enables users to see the person with whom they are talking in holographic form.
The rendering is so life-like, it’s almost as if the participants are chatting together on a street corner. The device’s cylindrical body is irrefutably unsightly for home environments, but expect future iterations to be infused with a more elegant design sensibility—hopefully, one on par with Jem’s.
(Holo)graphic Content [Cassandra Daily]