The door to Looking Glass's Brooklyn office.

Instead of sending 'one guy into a virtual world,' like in virtual reality, the Looking Glass allows people to bring little bits of a 3D virtual world into the real world. Looking Glass is 'philosophically different' from other companies developing 3D displays, Frayne said. Looking Glass's new eponymous product is basically a very advanced 3D display, or a 'holographic display.' You plug it into a desktop or laptop computer with one USB cable and one HDMI cable, and it can display a 3D model or world in full motion from common 3D software programs like Maya and Unity. The dystopian futures that Looking Glass, the startup, is trying to avoid are those where everyone's plugged into headsets, according to founder Shawn Frayne - whether they're the virtual reality products from companies like Facebook's Oculus, or augmented reality systems from companies like Magic Leap which have been hailed by tech leaders as the future and the next logical step after the smartphone.

After snaking your way through a 19th century industrial world to their very modern space, you see a message written on their door in red paint: 'No Dystopian Futures Allowed.' There's a tech startup based in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, inside an old glass factory. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders.

3d holographic glass paintings