A friend of mine has seen it. Says that it's true.

I can’t speak for the 8k one, but I’ve personally seen the small one (9”) and was completely blown way by how good it was.

The viewing angle is very specific; if you’re off to the side it doesn’t work, but the sweet spot is big enough or perhaps 4-5 people to stand in front of.

Given they’ve quietly delivered on exactly what they (as far as I can tell) promise, I see no particular reason to believe the 8k isn’t real.

Obviously wait for the detailed reviews to roll out, healthy skepticism (for example I have no idea what the SDK is like; perhaps it’s only capable of rendering specific types of 3D content)... but this isn’t a scam.

I've used their Unity SDK and it can render most content you throw at it. It has similar limitations to VR - faux-3D but really 2D post processing effects won't work. Sometimes shader tricks will break the expectations of the renderer.

But most regular 3D content will display as expected.

And, again, not a hologram.

Note that this "only" adds depth. It can't make anything appear to "come out of" the screen, the effect is more like a window. It's not like holograms in science fiction.

It's still pretty impressive tho.

This looks like "coming out of the screen" to me: https://miro.medium.com/max/1200/1*-nm0AvcydVzyhgDFdh6V2g.gi...

Do you mean the effect doesn't work with back to front motion? Like that pan can't start in the back and move forward?

Too late for an edit but I was going by what was shown in the video, which very much didn't look it could do that.

That said, that's still basically "3D but without glasses", not exactly the Holodeck "hard light" future tech many people think of when they hear "real hologram".

Yes. Most people think of something like this image of princess Leia coming out from R2: https://edge.alluremedia.com.au/m/g/2017/01/star-wars-hologr...

That requires

1. The imagine coming "out" of the screen such that you can even see the image at 90º to the projector

2. The image occluding the physical background.

As far as I understand, such a thing is impossible as seen in the still above (i.e. from a single projector), but can be fakes by using stuff in the air to scatter the light, like this research project (1) or this not-great version that uses fog (2)

(1) https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/01/princess-leia-hologr...

(2) http://www.leiadisplay.com/

I mean, a real hologram (made using light interference) is also not Holodeck hard light.

Yes, but at least a real hologram creates an actual depth sensation as the eye's focus needs to adapt.

This means 3d impression works even for people with reduced stereoscopic eyesight, and does not create headaches due to a mismatch of scene depth vs. physical display depth.

Such holographic displays do exist, e.g. www.seereal.com (which BTW recently received an investment by Volkswagen).

Parent meant that it can't obscure the environment. E.g. you can't put your finger behind the cover of the compass in your image.

You can create the illusion of things sticking out of a screen and if the screen is big enough the illusion is easier to maintain.

For a "low tech" example of such effects take a look at http://amasci.com/amateur/holohint.html and related content.