With the coronavirus pandemic having put a stop to much global travel since March 2020, it has fuelled a growing interest in the use of holograms - 3D light projections of a person - as a more life-like, more immersive, more sensory alternative to video calls. Los-Angeles-based Portl is one of the firms at the forefront of the technology, and Mr Nussbaum says "we can't make our portals fast enough". Its portals are eight feet (2.5m) tall, glass-fronted, computerised boxes. Inside the booths a life-size hologram of a person appears. The portals have built-in speakers, so that the hologram's 'voice' can be heard. They also include cameras and microphones so that the user of the hologram can see and hear the people in front of his, or her, projection. The Portl system is aimed at business customers, and is currently also being used by other firms such as Netflix and T-Mobile. The portals cost from $60,000 (£45,000) each, so they are certainly expensive, although the company says they can be rented for considerably less. Portl's Mr Nussbaum says he is confident that hologram technology is going to replace standard video screens in video conferencing in "five years".
