By Lucas Matney, TechCrunch
All-in-one PCs have adopted some pretty odd designs over the years, but I've never seen one quite like this.
The Looking Glass Pro is an all-in-one gaming PC that's focused on one thing, visualizing 3D content on its bizarre lenticular display that makes you feel like you're staring into a glass box filled with pixels. The embedded 4K display renders dozens of potential views and pipes them out as lower-res slices through some bizarre lens wizardry so that users can see the onscreen content in volumetric 60fps 3D without needing glasses.
You can get a better sense of how exactly this looks from a video that the company tweeted out.
With #AWE2019 fast approaching, a couple of exciting announcements coming your way! Numero 1⃣: Today, we launched the Looking Glass Pro, an all-in-one solution designed specifically for businesses seeking a turnkey holographic display solution https://t.co/IkKe6cFicf pic.twitter.com/0kGGoVxHzp— Looking Glass Factory 🔜 #AWE2019 Booth 705 (@LKGGlass) May 28, 2019
This isn't the first product from Brooklyn-based Looking Glass Factory, but it is a culmination of all their weirder efforts to date.
Last year, the company raised nearly $850,000 in a crowdfunding campaign for its Looking Glass display, focusing the market for the display technology on creators looking to visualize 3D graphics and objects without having to toss on a VR headset. The company has disclosed nearly $14 million in funding.
With the new hardware, the startup is aiming to court some enterprise customers to shove one of these front-and-center on their conference table displays, hoping that the new design can streamline the process of showcasing 3D content. Looking Glass Factory is courting everyone who has ever brought a VR headset to showcase 3D content. The startup argues that their solution showcases glorious 3D but doesn't require a headset, and can showcase multiple views to multiple people at once.
The hardware is focused on ensuring that you can cue up content and live-render it as users manipulate the content or change views with the on-board touch controls. The Looking Glass Pro integrates an Intel NUC 8 VR mini PC running Windows as well as a 7" secondary touch panel screen that flips out from the side to make navigating the PC a bit easier, though that process still seems to be a tad janky at the moment.
The whole premise for this thing is weird and cool but also super expensive. The original 15.6" Looking Glass display was $3,000; this thing is $6,000. The workstation is available for pre-order now and ships in July.
