In 2022, I introduced you to James Brown, the Weta Workshop graphics engineer whose hobby is building amazing displays. Now, he’s built a crystal ball filled with shimmering, spinning volumetric light — and of course he’s playing Doom on it.
But not just any Doom. Voxel Doom, where every dot of the game’s graphics lives in 3D space, just like the dots of the volumetric display he’s created.
As he explains on YouTube, the physical illusion is fairly simple: “It’s like a hologram fan, but instead of spinning a 1D strip to make a 2D image, it spins a 2D panel to make a 3D image.” On his Mastodon, he breaks it down a bit more with visual aids:
Brown’s been working on this for over a year now: if I’m not mistaken, he introduced the project in August 2023 by channeling his inner Doc Brown, saying “If my calculations are correct, when this baby hits 300rpm you’re going to see some serious shit.” But he’s since discovered it needs to spin a good bit faster than that for a smooth image, particularly when he’s trying to film it. So keep your fingers away.
You can follow his progress on his Mastodon, where he’s not just playing Doom — you can find volumetric lunar landers and skulls and dino heads, for example. He just published this to his YouTube too:
GIF by Sean Hollister / The Verge; Video by James Brown
And yes, they can play Doom.