holographic prototyping

Holographic prototypes of new products may be developed and viewed in a fraction of the time required by physical prototyping and modeling processes. The site on Wikipedia: Holographic memory has more details.

For holographic data encoding, first a laser ray is split in two. Then one of the resulting rays is passed by means of a Spatial Light Modulator (SLM) that converts patterns of electronic information into white and black patterns in the laser beam. This ray becomes the "signal" beam. The second ray becomes the "reference" ray. Then the two beams are focused and intersected within an optically sensitive storage media. This intersection makes a chemical reaction between the storage medium and the pattern of overlapping peaks and troughs of the two beams of light. This burns the information into the media in the form of a hologram. To restore the information, a beam with the same wave phase and angle as the original reference ray is focused within the recordable media, the signal ray is retrieved, and the white and black configurations are changed back into electronic data through the application of a Digital Camera Detector (DCD). Three-dimensional holographic information storage can store considerably more information in a given space compared to surface-only, information storage systems such as present day CDs and DVDs. Virtual Tours covers more information along these lines.

Link to Holographic Animation for more on holotech.