Just when you thought your smartphone could do everything, along comes Hologram, an app that allows phone cameras to take 3D photos. Created by Zain Shah, a University of Pittsburgh sophomore, and Ishaan Gulrajani, an MIT freshman, Hologram was top winner at HackPSU 2013, Penn State's recent hackathon.
“Though many of the projects were entertaining, there was one hack that had everyone mesmerized—Hologram,” hackathon organizer Kathleen Warner wrote in a blog post.
“The world you and I live in right now is three dimensional,” explains Gulrajani in a demo video. “But unfortunately the photos that the cameras on all of our smartphones take exist only in two dimensions. This is so lame!”
The app works by basically taking two photos – one with flash and one without. “Areas of the photo, which are dimmer without flash and bright with flash, are closer and areas of the photo, which aren't affected by the flash, are farther away,” Gulrajani says.
As first-place winner, the Hologram team won an all-expense-paid trip to San Francisco, sponsored by Ready Force, where they'll tour companies including Dropbox and Uber.
The latest HackPSU was Penn State's largest ever, drawing over 150 participants from schools including MIT, the University of Pennsylvania, University of Pittsburgh, University of Michigan and Carnegie Mellon University, reports Warner. The judges included David Rusenko, CEO of Weebly and Steve Huffman, co-founder of Reddit and Hipmunk.
Source: Kathleen Warner, HackPSU 2013
Writer: Elise Vider