For example imagine a spinning display like those of the article but somehow tuned so that they are only visible when exactly head on. In that case, you know where the observer is: right in line with the screen. So you can have backface culling; as the display spins you render all 360 (or however many) viewpoints.

Now granted, this doesn't deal with how high or low the observer is. We'd need to find another solution for that.

oh wow yeah I've seen a lot of this channel's work before the lego display, the CV fiber optic bundle display

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46137203

I mean, I think it's SUPER cool and would not mind one sitting on my desk.

But from a product standpoint...? It doesn't scale well in size, resolution or refresh rate.

VR is pretty much better if you want a the kind of immersion I think you'd be looking for, and even selling that is hard.

Uh, I get the former but why the latter?

[1] https://www.voxon.co/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Silverman

https://www.holoxica.com/light-field-displays

[1]: https://youtu.be/pcAEqbYwixU?t=1038

My intuition says "change the sphere to a cylinder", because then we can minimize how much air could be passing around the sides and top of the display-rectangle, potentially curling around and causing turbulence and noise.

However, that introduces a new issue of visibility: Big flat surfaces have different glare/reflection problems than a spheroid does. It may become harder for the user to see clearly, whether from external glare or from internal reflections in a dark room. What if the top face of the glass cylinder was very slightly curved outwards, to avoid the worst-case scenario where you just can't look down into the device from certain angles? Depending on the refractive index of the glass, it could just be a thicker top, so that it doesn't create dead-space on the inside.