World's first desktop holographic display goes on sale

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VR and AR headsets are becoming increasingly powerful, and if you work in 3D they're a brilliant way of getting a really good, close look at your 3D art.

• 10 tips for sculpting in VR

If you've ever worn a headset for any length of time, though, you'll know they're a bit of a faff and not hugely comfortable; especially in hot weather, right?

If only there was a holographic display that you could just put on your desktop and see your work in 3D without the need for a headset. But look; now there is!

The Looking Glass is billed as a holographic display for 3D creators, and it looks amazing. Developed over four years by a team of holographers, engineers, Unity developers and 3D graphic artists, it uses a combination of lightfield and volumetric technologies to create a holographic display that you can put on your desktop to view and interact with your 3D work.

It supports 3D models and animations in OBJ, FBX, STL and gLTF format, and there's also an app in development to enable exports direct from Maya; you'll also be able to get live viewports from Maya, Zbrush, Blender, Tinkercad, and Solidworks. There are dozens of of holographic apps available through the Looking Glass's app library, and with Looking Glass's HoloPlay Unity SDK you'll even be able to develop your own apps.

For added immersive fun you can add a Leap Motion controller to your Looking Glass setup, enabling you to manipulate your work directly with your hands; you can also hook up a Nintendo Switch joycon or an Ultrahaptics development kit.

Basically this looks like a dream come true for anyone working with 3D, whether you're a game developer, 3D artist, product designer, architect or just someone who enjoys messing about in 3D. The project has been on Kickstarter for less than 24 hours and it's already smashed its target several times over; if you want to be one of the first people to get their hands on a Looking Glass when they ship in December then you'd better move fast, because we can see it swiftly becoming vastly oversubscribed.

If you really get a move on you could snag yourself a sweet bargain, too; Looking Glass is running some great day one offers that could save you $201 on the price of a standard-size model, or $1,001 on the large model that normally costs $3,000. Seriously, though, you'll have to be quick: the offer ends at 10AM EST (that's 3PM UTC), so get your skates on.

Related articles:

• The best VR headsets for 2018
• How to sculpt a character in VR
• 5 tips to improve your VR creations

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