Long, long ago, in a university far, far away (USC) some really clever students came up with a way of generating what appears to be a free standing hologram, a la Star Wars. Really though, all they did was use “a standard programmable graphics card to render over 5,000 images per second of interactive 3D graphics, projecting 360-degree views with 1.25 degree separation up to 20 updates per second.” I didn’t understand that either until I watched the video on their site. They beam images at minutely separated angles, at just the right frequency, from a screen to viewers who see, from any angle they happen to be viewing, what appears to be a freestanding 3D image. Anyway, you have to watch the video to get the full effect.

–mike battersby