Visualization techniques are constantly evolving.  It started with stone in cave, then pen to paper, then computer modeling and now we are finally getting into the hologram arena.  Holograms have always teased us in movies such as the landscape being spun around in the movie Avatar.  We are so close to having that capability.  This video shows a new form of holographic visualization used for architecture.  Imagine the possibilities of it in the automotive and product world.

Picture going into a sales meeting and showing the customer this.  Get a full size hologram of a car and show multiple versions in a clinic without ever having to make a prototype (maybe then the price of cars would come down).  This kind of visualization could greatly speed up the development process.

Holographic Architectural Imaging by Zebra from Core77 on Vimeo.

Here is some more info on the product from Freshome.

Traditional 3D visualization tools are limited to 2D display technology (computer monitors for instance). Zebra’s holographic images are unlike anything you have ever seen. The image literally “floats” in the air. You will be tempted to reach into the image with the expectation that you will touch the object being presented. You can move around the image to view it from a wide variety of angles with no special glasses or other viewing aids. In this video you’ll see Michael Klug of Zebra Imaging demonstrating their holographic architectural representation system. Zebra Imaging makes digitally-mastered, actively-animated, true-color, full-parallax holographic images. These holographic images are available in full color, or in monochrome (green). Zebra’s holographic images can be scaled to any size, large or small. By tiling together multiple tiles, it is possible to create large city maps, full sized cars, humans, and machinery. The minimum you have to do is supply the digital data set–Zebra can do the rest

[via freshome][thanks Sean]