Last December, I backed the Looking Glass Go Kickstarter project from the Looking Glass Factory. It’s a portable headset-free holographic display, which promised to turn any photo into a hologram: ‘Shoot instant spatial photos with your phone and view them with incredible depth and detail as holograms. Or turn older memories from your archives into a stream of 3D holograms delivered to your Looking Glass Go over WiFi’.

Mine arrived just over a week ago, and I thought I’d write a post showing the unboxing, and include a couple of quick tutorials on how to start making conversion holograms straight from your Android or iPhone using the Looking Glass Go app, and include my first impressions. I’ll also explain how to use Masuji Suto’s i3DMovieMaker app, which allows iPhones with a USB-C connection (15 onwards) to be connected directly to the Looking Glass Go, and uses the depth map included in portrait photos to create a multi-view image.

I have been asked how to take real ‘holographic’ 3-D photos yourself using multiple frames and load them into the device, so I will write a separate tutorial for this.

The manufacturer states that 3-D video display capability will be added to the LGG at a later date, so for now, this tutorial is all about using still photos.

If you missed the Kickstarter, the Looking Glass Go displays are now available directly from the Looking Glass Factory’s website. Their website also includes their guide to unboxing and getting started here.

Unboxing the Looking Glass Go

I chose to back the Super Early Bird Bundle, which included the Looking Glass Go display, a battery pack, a carry case, a USB-C to USB-C cable, a worldwide adapter, and a sticker set.

Above: The Looking Glass Go unboxed (the power cable is inside this box).

Above: The accessories unboxed, including the carry case, the worldwide plugs (adapters), and the battery pack.

Above: The sticker pack, which I think alone was well worth backing the Kickstarter.

Above: Plugging the Looking Glass Go directly into the power supply and switching it on starts the standalone demo mode, displaying some impressive holograms.

Above: Obligatory cat hologram successfully located.

Using the Looking Glass Go App to Convert your Photos into Holograms on your Phone

• This setup is the same for both iPhones and Android.

• Find the ‘Looking Glass Go’ app in the app store and install it.

• Open the app on your phone and click ‘Get Started’.

• Either sign up or login to your Looking Glass account.

• The app will ask you to switch on your Looking Glass Go device. Plug it into the mains power and press the power button on the right side towards the back of the device until the green light shows. Click ‘Device is on’ on the app.

• The app will ask you to pair the device, so switch on pairing mode by pressing the forward button on the right side of the device for 5 seconds, until the green light flashes blue every few seconds, and the device screen shows ‘Ready to Pair’. Click on the app ‘Device is ready to pair’.

• Give the app permisson to connect and determine the relative position of nearby devices, and allow it to switch your Bluetooth on, if it isn’t already. Click ‘Connect’ when the device appears on the app.

• The next screen on the app is ‘Connect your Go to Wifi’, so choose the Wifi network from the list, continue, enter the WiFi password, and click ‘connect’. The device will show ‘Connecting’ and ‘Activating’. If it prompts, install any firmware updates here.

• The app will now offer to convert any image into a hologram, so press ‘Choose image’. Any portrait-orientated photo works well, but you can also choose from landscape ones and zoom in later if required.

• Your selected photo will upload, then you can edit it by pressing ‘Focus hologram’, where you can choose from ‘Focus’, ‘Depth’, and ‘Zoom’.

• In ‘Focus’, you can either click on the photo or move the slider to choose where you want the hologram focus to be.

• In ‘Depth’ you can use the slider to increase or decrease the depth.

• In ‘Zoom’ you can use the slider to zoom into the middle of the image.

• Save your image when you’re happy with your modifications, and it will upload it to your Looking Glass Go device (for some reason the iPhone takes a heck of a lot longer to sync with the display than Android).

• You can repeat these steps several times to keep adding more of your own photos to your LGG device, and it will display them by running through them. It will remove the pre-installed demo images, but you can get these back again by deleting all your holograms off your ‘Photo uploads’ in the app.

• The more you try this with different photos, the more you’ll notice how some are much better than others to use as AI converted holograms. I’m finding ones in colour which are evenly well-lit are optimal, so the AI can use the shadows to calculate the depth more naturally. I’m also finding, however, that the automatic conversion still has a long way to go, as most of the photos I’ve tried so far don’t really work, often with something which should be in the foreground being stuck in the background (hats, hair and whiskers are a few examples). Pets, for example, often seem to convert to only two layers of depth, so a kitty’s face looks to be flat.
• Quite ironically, the LGG app doesn’t seem to be able to handle spatial photos taken with iPhone 15 Pros right now. If you try to load them through the app, they will display like holographic versions of ‘over-under’ images. It’s early days, however, so I hope these automatic conversions improve, but there are other ways to add holograms to the device, and for the iPhone 15s and later models I really recommend Masuji Suto’s app (see below).

Gaussian Splats and NeRFs

• The Looking Glass Factory also states that advanced spatial photography techniques like Gaussian Splats and NeRFs can be used with the device. I’ll refer you over to them for tutorials on how to use these with the device.

• Masuji Suto has also made tutorials for a web application he’s made that displays 3D Gaussian Splats in SBS, anaglyphs and interlaced, and a web application that displays 3D Gaussian Splats in the Looking Glass devices, please click here for them.

Using an iPhone 15 (and later) with i3DMovieMaker and the Looking Glass Go

I used an iPhone 15 Pro Max and a MacBook Pro to use this app, and I have to say I’m really stoked with the results, so a big thank you to Masuji Suto for making this possible. Setting up the device, with the phone and the app, however, definitely caused me a few headaches, so I hope this guide helps! Masuji has also written a guide, which can be found here.

• First of all, and really importantly, follow some of the above steps to install the Looking Glass Go app on your phone and ensure the device’s firmware is updated to the latest version. Otherwise you’ll be sat like me, scratching your head, wondering why the iPhone complains the LGG device uses too much power when you connect it later. Also make sure your iPhone has plenty of charge in its battery, as connecting it to the LGG drains it quite considerably.

• This was the trickest bit for me to figure out! To ensure your i3DMovieMaker app will calibrate with the Looking Glass Go’s display, use a Mac device, and I used an app I already had installed to connect to Android device files called ‘Android File Transfer’. Connect the Looking Glass Go directly to the Mac using the USB-C, and the ‘Android File Transfer’ app should automatically open and show the files in the LGG. Locate ‘visual.json’ and Airdrop it across to the iPhone you’ll be using (I had to copy it to my desktop and then Airdrop it). You can also use the Looking Glass’ ‘Looking Glass Bridge‘ to open the files on the device through your Mac.

• On the iPhone (this can also work with iPads with a USB-C connector) install the i3DMovieMaker app.

• To get going, ensure your Looking Glass Go device is connected directly to your iPhone using the USB-C cable, and switched on by pressing and holding the power button (the blue light will go from flashing to steady, and the iPhone’s display will show through the LGG).

• Open the i3DMovieMaker app, and click on bottom left ‘File’, then bottom ‘Setting’.

• Towards the bottom, click the slider to switch on ‘Use Looking Glass’ and click ‘JSON’, opening the file you just installed in your ‘recents’ and the settings for the LGG display will be setup in the app and ready to go.

• Quit that menu, and again click on ‘File’, then ‘Open media files’. Click on your ‘Portrait’ album and click on any of the photos in this album (please see my latest blog post to use this with stereoscopic and Spatial photos and videos. P.S. Sorrynotsorry my portrait album is full of kitties).

• The photo will open in the app with the original photo on the left and its depth map on the right.

• You can use the slider here to change the depth. When you’re happy, click on the blue and grey ‘3D’ button (on the left of the screen, next to ‘Back’ and the slider).

• Your photo will now display in your LGG device, and you can alter the Focus and Depth in real time through the app on your phone. You can also move and zoom into the photo by pinching and sliding it in the app.

• The app also allows you to go through all your Portrait photos taken with your phone and display them on the LGG by clicking ‘Prev.’ and ‘Next’, above the Focus slider bar.

• You can also click on the ‘File’ menu here to save the photo you’ve just made as a Looking Glass image on your phone, then, with your Looking Glass connected directly to your iPhone, open it directly in your iPhone’s photo album (without using the i3DMovieMaker app). Once the file is saved, you can Airdrop it to your Mac, and next time you connect your LGG to it, you can drop the file directly into the display.

I love the results! I do notice there are some missing pieces of background if you exaggerate the depth too much when there is something in the extreme foreground, which is to be expected. On the whole, its amazing to see your photos working so well as holograms.

I’ve really enjoyed using my previous Looking Glass device, the Portrait, to enable people who can’t see stereoscopic 3-D images to still see 3-D ‘holograms’, and I’m so excited now to have a more portable device to carry with me.

I hope this guide helps others wanting to get started with their Looking Glass Go device, and I wish you lots of fun and holographic kitties.

Rebecca

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