Two days ago, I received a giant heavy metal wedge from Sony. The largest side contained a camera, and a 15.6-inch 4K screen.
I plugged it into a powerful gaming computer, and fired up the first demo. A tiny, intricately detailed Volkswagen Atlas materialized in front of my face — and when I pressed a button, it floated right up out of the screen. A couple minutes later, I was watching a 4-inch tall anime girl dance her heart out inside Sony’s contraption, tapping her feet atop a floor of hexagonal mirrors. It’s the magic of stereoscopic 3D.
The wedge is Sony’s new Spatial Reality Display, and it’s not remotely a new idea — it’s just the industry’s latest attempt to build a so-called “holographic display” for the content creators of the…