Light Field Lab, a company founded by ex-Lytro veterans, announced the successful completion of a $7 million seed funding round that will help the company further develop a light field-based holographic display. The seed round was led by Khosla Ventures and Sherpa Capital, with participation by R7 Partners.
The display, the company says, will enable photo-real objects to appear as if they are floating in space without the aid of eye wear. More importantly, the technology, which the company calls a “full parallax holographic display,” is said to be capable of serving up light field objects to several people simultaneously, all from the viewers’ own unique position relative to the display itself.
According to Venture Beat, current display prototypes measure at six inches by four inches, but the modules intended for production will be scaled up to two feet by two feet. Light Field Lab CEO and founder Jon Karafin says that eventually many of these TV set-style displays could be stitched together in order to produce high-resolution holograms that could fill larger spaces, something on the order of 100-feet wide screens.
“Projecting holograms is just the beginning,” said Karafin. “We are building the core modules to enable a real-world Holodeck. The strategic guidance offered by our investors is critical to enable these breakthrough technologies.”
Light Field Lab says that future releases of the technology will allow users to touch and interact with holographic objects, something that could be accomplished by volumetric haptics, a method for creating three-dimensional haptic shapes in mid-air using focused ultrasound.