Looking Glass has been in the holographic display business for years now, perfecting its tech for magically bringing images to life in commercial settings. Its latest product is designed to grace your living room – and it doesn’t cost the earth.
The company’s new Musubi photo frame presents any image – and even short video clips – as holograms that seem to hover in space like floating 3D objects.
The photos and videos you’ve already shot with any camera will work in here. You don’t need special glasses to view them, or position yourself in any particular spot for the full effect.
musubi: the first consumer holographic photo and video frame
The tech behind it has been in the works for a few years now, and has previously been incorporated in displays for outdoor advertising and showcasing exhibits in museums and showrooms. Looking Glass’ Hololuminescent Display (HLD) features a 2D TFT-LCD screen that shows high-resolution visuals, with a fixed holographic background embedded in the display stack.
The latter creates a sort of virtual space for the visual content to float in, and adds a sense of depth. When combined, you’ll get to see immersive 3D images that you’ll have a hard time taking your eyes off of.
The Musubi is being designed to be as simple to use as any conventional digital picture frame. Simply load your photos and videos up to 30 seconds long into the companion desktop app, and they’ll automatically be converted into holograms. Once you’re done, just connect the frame to your computer with a USB-C cable, and transfer the converted content over to begin displaying it an endless loop.
Looking Glass
You can choose to keep or remove the background from your photos in the app. Videos will play like on a regular display, but you’ll be able to choose a ‘hologram moment’ in your clips that will appear as a 3D freeze frame when it comes up on the screen.
The 7-inch display is housed in a clear acrylic frame, and only supports portrait mode. Its 167 PPI pixel density doesn’t sound like much, but at that size, it should appear roughly equivalent to the resolution of a 4K 27-inch monitor. It also has a speaker to play sound in your videos.
Looking Glass
The Musubi is designed to stay plugged into a wall outlet, but it also has a battery that’ll keep it going for three hours without external power. The 8 GB of onboard storage will hold up to 1,000 holographic moments, so you should be able to get plenty of memories on there for your own family to relive, or to load up as a gift.
Looking Glass is crowdfunding the Musubi on Kickstarter, where it’s listed as retailing at US$149. It’s presently discounted to $99 for pre-orders.
Looking Glass
All crowdfunding campaigns carry an element of risk, so you’ll want to keep that in mind if you choose to back this campaign. That said, the company has previously launched and shipped numerous other holographic products on Kickstarter, and we even reviewed one of its previous displays a couple of years ago.
If all goes to plan, orders are slated to ship worldwide in June 2026, and delivery costs will be calculated once the campaign ends.
Find the Musubi on Kickstarter.
Source: Looking Glass