The General Electric Company (GE) have devised an amazing way to experience Augmented Reality in your own home. Using a print-out of a PDf that they provide, a digital hologram of their new Smart Grid concept will open up from the page on your computer screen. If you then blow into a microphone the wind turbines spin faster. Try it for yourself.

The hologram uses a Flash ActionScript 3.0 toolkit called FLARToolKit which is a software library for building Augmented Reality (AR) applications. It seems they have created a program that will make any webcam initiate the hologram if the shapes on the paper are detected. It then continues to track their position in 3D space, along with their X and Y-axis rotation to then have the hologram follow appropriately. Does the Doctor in Start Trek Voyager come to mind, anyone?