Instead of viewing 3D data on a flat screen, imagine being able to manipulate it in a full 3D environment that doesn’t require special glasses or other devices. Zebra Imaging is working on holographic display technology that will open up new possibilities on how we navigate and collaborate with spatial data.

I recently spoke with Michael Klug, CTO and co-founder of Zebra Imaging, about their film holograms that reveal rich 3D environments when illuminated by a light source and also their work toward the 3D holographic display.

“In the future you should be able to interact with the model directly so that you are designing on the display itself in 3D through 3D. Instead of using a mouse to draw a shape or a cube that gets represented on a 2D screen like we do today, you might actually use some other kind of device to trace out a cube in a spatial volume over one of our displays and have it appear there.

Hopefully that will allow the design process to move more smoothly and efficiently. As kids we all grow up playing with blocks and our whole world is 3D in front of us, and I think you never lose that paradigm in your mind. I think people have to learn how to deal with these other tools that we create, but for intrinsically 3D tasks like building or landscape design or city planning, designing in 3D is definitely the preference.”

Read the full interview here.

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