The Perspecta is a spherical display device that shows moving 3 dimensional images that can be walked around and viewed from many angles. I’m waiting for the first gaming application. Imagine 3D Quake where the person on the other side of the sphere can tell you what’s hiding behind the wall. (Or be what’s hiding behind the wall, I suppose.)

Several applications have already emerged. Two oil companies, three medical centres and the US air force have bought or loaned Perspectas and are using them respectively to visualise slices of the Earth’s crust from seismic data, human organs from MRI and CT scans, and squadrons of aircraft from radar data.

This is a big step forward from rotating a 3D computer image on a flat screen, Favalora says. Nothing beats being able to walk all the way around the object, view it from the top and zoom in whenever you want, he claims.

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