A team of Spanish engineers led by Dr. Elodie Bouzbib at the Public University of Navarra has created the world’s first interactive 3D holographic display that you can actually touch with your fingers. According to NewAtlas, the system, called FlexiVol, uses special elastic diffuser strips that project images nearly 3,000 times per second onto an oscillating surface, creating holograms that float in mid-air.
This groundbreaking research, conducted in 2025, aims to make interacting with holograms more natural and intuitive than using traditional 3D mouse controllers. Think of it like the holographic interfaces you’ve seen in sci-fi movies, but one you can actually reach out and touch!
The new FlexiVol system dramatically improves how we interact with 3D objects compared to traditional methods. A study by Dr. Bouzbib’s team revealed impressive user confidence gains:
- 94% of users felt more confident about completion times with FlexiVol
- 67% reported higher confidence in accuracy compared to a 3D mouse
- Users could directly touch, swipe, pinch, and rotate holographic objects
- Interactions felt more natural and happened faster than with conventional 3D devices
So how does this magic actually work? The elastic diffuser strips are flexible, translucent materials that scatter light to create 3D images that appear to float in space. When these strips oscillate thousands of times per second, the projected images blend together to form stable holograms you can interact with using your fingers.
This is fundamentally different from regular 3D displays that need special glasses or screens to create the illusion of depth. While FlexiVol already represents a huge leap forward in holographic technology, the research team is exploring adding haptic feedback in future versions – meaning you might someday not just see and touch these holograms, but actually feel them push back against your fingers. I’d say that’s about as close to Star Trek’s holodeck as we’ve gotten so far!
