Sony 3D-360 Hologram

Sony's new 3D Hologram display, which is capable of rendering objects inside of a cylindrical glass enclosure. The effect is a ghostlike three-dimensional view that approaches technology from science fiction films. Today at the Digital Content Expo in Tokyo, Sony finally unveiled the device, which is about the size of a stack of CD-Rom disks. The first video of the machine gives you a pretty good sense of what the device can do, which is quite a lot. Images are only 128x96 pixels in resolution, but the LED technology in the screen can display 24-bit color depth, giving images an impressive rich color. Seeing 3D avatars rotating in space like that gets us salivating over the gaming potential of this thing. Earlier we speculated that a home console or handheld game device in the future could utilize this technology. Sony says it has plans to make much larger versions of this prototype

The "360 Degree Stereoscopic Display" unveiled by Sony is a prototype of a tabletop 3D display that can be seen from 360 degrees and doesn't require 3D glasses for full effect.According to Sony's press release, the gadget measures 13 cm in diameter and is 27 cm tall .

So what's it for? Seems that Sony isn't sure yet. Speculations are swirling that the device could be used commercially (for advertising, medical visualization, and digital signage) or in the home as a 3D digital photo display.

PSPWorld brainstorms some uses:

Imagine a future PSP shaped like a snow globe, in which images were conjured up in full 3D, with users controlling the action with touch input from the outside. Sony has already said that it intends to build 3D support into its PlayStation 3 games