Can the Looking Glass Holographic Screen be re-purposed for 3D gaming...?

[P.C.Zen]

It doesn't have to be holographic, it only needs to be 3D.

I was doing some math to figure out what it might take to run a 1080p game on Looking Glass's screen, when it occurred to me, it might only need to use two planes to display a 3D image...? ...it doesn't have to be holographic, it only needs to be 3D.

But having said that:

The Looking Glass Holographic Screen has 45 planes that it (somehow) uses to display a holographic image. Going by what I've seen reported, for each pixel to be rendered, in space, from the various angles it needs to be rendered to appear holographic, it needs 45 separate renders...

...so, to render a 1920 x 1080p image to look like a hologram, whatever system was driving it would need to render 93,312,000 pixels per frame. (1920 x 1080 x 45).

That's 11.25 "4k" screens worth of rendering:

93,312,000
/ 8,294,400 (3840 x 2160 ("4K")).

So...it seems like we're a little way off from rendering something like Cyberpunk 2077 in holographic 1080p, but we only need 3D.

So, I guess what I'm wondering is, whether the looking glass screen will be viable for rendering games in basic 3D.

I'm assuming we'll be able to watch 3D movies on a Looking Glass screen, so 3D games are maybe not a bridge too far?

P.S. The Looking Glass screen that looks like their potential commercial prototype is "8K" (33,000,000 pixels). Not sure what that says about their projected release date (given the processing power it would need to run such a thing) or what they're intending to be its use?

Here's Linus taking a look at both the Dev kit and the prototype: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EA2FQXs4dw


EDIT: Okay, so, it just occurred to me that they only need to fill the 3D pixels that display objects in space and not the empty space surrounding them, and furthermore, they only have to render the outer shell of the objects in the image, so only a percentage of the 3D pixels in the screen need to be activated at any given time. That cuts those big numbers by a lot.

The more I look at this stuff and get my head around it, the more I think that we'd still need shutter glasses with it for basic 3D. As, as far as I can tell, it's not lenticular, it's just creating a 3D image in space that you can view from any angle within the 50 degree viewing angle. Like you might 3D print an object one tiny cube at a time, this thing creates a 3D image within the plastic substrate one 3D pixel at a time.

So I guess, in answer to my own question...yes, it could probably be co-opted for basic 3D but you'd still need shutter glasses. Either that, or wait for the hardware to get to the point where you can render 1080p holographically and hope someone can figure out an algorithm to convert the existing games to holographic 3D.

I'd love to see what Nintendo must be doing with their dev kit. I'm guessing they've already got a holographic 3D Mario working with the screen.