Hot take, but once the novelty wears off, POV LED displays like this just look like absolute garbage and are uselessly low resolution.
Before LEDs this type of volumetric display originally rotated a helical or tilted projection surface and used a projector which allowed the entire volume to be scanned once or twice during each rotation. This had the advantage of looking more continuous, being higher resolution, and being less expensive.
I personally thought laser based picoprojectors (of the "focus free" type) were going to explode the market for small and cheap volumetric displays, but for some reason the tech never made it out of a few weird niche products.
Ultimately I concluded that volumetric displays simply don't have a great practical application *except for* the novelty. Is anyone using such a display professionally for an actual practical purpose?
Yes I think I actually spotted this in their video demo where you will notice one of the displays looks way way way better than the rest of them. That would be a projector one.
It is considerably easier to achieve sync and high framerates with LED i would expect. There are also some dedicated chips coming to the market to drive stuff like those POV video signs that are now available on aliexpress for a song.
If I implied this was a singular product, I apologize. There are quite literally hundreds. Searching for "Hologram Fan" will pull up the type I am specifically referring to as being a current fad, but the number of other LED POV display stuff available on aliexpress is immense.
> look like absolute garbage and are uselessly low resolution.
I wish you'd chosen a different tone
Plenty of things are low resolution, flawed, impractical and lacking in fidelity and still look gorgeous. In fact - people are drawn towards things that have these kind of qualities. Some of it is nostalgia, some of it is that the flaws add a quality and richness of their own. People spend a lot of time and money trying to recreate older technologies because of these aspects. The examples are too numerous to list.
I wouldn't have quibbled if you'd chosen words that didn't come across as sneering. I think there's a core validity to what you're saying but it's just the way you said it.
Sorry, but I will continue to disagree. For a $6500 device the quality, resolution, and spatial continuity is utterly unacceptable. As a DIY project or a product that is price aligned with other LED POV products with similar BoM costs I would be more willing to agree with you.
Before LEDs this type of volumetric display originally rotated a helical or tilted projection surface and used a projector which allowed the entire volume to be scanned once or twice during each rotation. This had the advantage of looking more continuous, being higher resolution, and being less expensive.
I personally thought laser based picoprojectors (of the "focus free" type) were going to explode the market for small and cheap volumetric displays, but for some reason the tech never made it out of a few weird niche products.
Ultimately I concluded that volumetric displays simply don't have a great practical application *except for* the novelty. Is anyone using such a display professionally for an actual practical purpose?