Holographic displays have been a promising technology for decades but one recent technological development may just see a holographic future that matches the dreams of science fiction. Ostendo Technologies and their Quantum Photonic Imager (QPI) chip may just drag holograms out of the lab and into the hands everyone everywhere.

Roughly the size of a Tic Tac Ostendo Technologies holographic Quantum Photonic Imager chip is small enough to be built into any device, even mobiles. The chip is able to project a real 3D image without the need for glasses or eye tracking cameras.

The imager chip itself consists of wafer containing a million micro LED’s, an image processor and software to help the system properly render the images. The current generation is able to project a 48inch diagonally wide image and multiple chips can be combined on a circuit board to project larger images. Incredibly the chip operates at an incredible 5000dpi resolution but other properties such as colour and update frequency still require work though.

In order to generate the hologram the QPI chip projects two interference patterns above the chip, where the patterns meet the image is formed in 3D space.

The QPI chip is scheduled to begin shipping to consumers in mobile devices by the first half of 2015, the first gen chip will only project a 2D image though. The second generation chips should be available in the second half of 2015 with full 3D on board. Once full 3D capture of video is more common projecting full 3D video will look even better, see Google’s Project Tango for more information.

By far the most promising holographic technology in years Ostendo Technologies may be about to unleash a revolution on the world. Or will they fade away slowly as many before them have? Unfortunately we will have to wait till Mid 2015 for the answer, here at Highpants we think the future looks bright.

Reference: Ostendo Technologies
Reference: Ostendo Technologies Article