VNTANA's hologram cases used a 19th-century optical trick

What you see

At a trade show or store, a viewer looks into a display case and sees a colourful, moving figure or product seeming to float inside it, visible to the naked eye from the front, no glasses needed. VNTANA's own 2016 announcement describes a '46-inch Interactive Display' letting consumers interact with products and brand ambassadors 'in a 3D setting.'

How it works

VNTANA's own patent, filed under its earlier name Ventana 3D, names the mechanism directly. It describes 'the Pepper's Ghost Illusion,' an effect 'known for centuries' after John Henry Pepper, in which a picture from a video panel or projector is aimed at roughly a 45-degree angle onto a transparent screen; the surface reflects the bright image toward the viewer while the dark space behind stays hidden, so only the reflected picture appears to float. The patent states VNTANA's pyramid-shaped units repeat this trick on multiple angled transparent faces so a video plays toward each viewing direction in turn.

The patent adds that a hidden space behind the screen is normally 'painted black with only light-coloured objects in it,' so only the projected picture reads clearly. None of this appears on VNTANA's own consumer-facing pages: its About page called the result something you view 'without tricks, no goggles,' without naming Pepper's Ghost, even though the company's own patent filing spells the mechanism out in detail.

Viewing conditions and limits

VNTANA sold several sizes; an archived product page lists 9, 10, and 15-foot configurations, each needing a defined floor footprint and dedicated power circuits. The Pepper's Ghost mechanism generally needs a darkened surrounding space for the reflected image to read against, though VNTANA's own marketing pages do not state this requirement directly. As retrieved on 16 September 2026, VNTANA's current site no longer describes this hologram-case hardware at all, instead presenting the company as a maker of '3D and CAD' asset-management software, suggesting the original display-case line is no longer its stated business.

What it is not

This is not a free-space or volumetric image with real depth you can walk fully around; it is a flat video reflected off an angled transparent surface, the same family of illusion used on 19th-century stages. Anything described as a 'hologram' on this kind of case is, by the company's own patent, an angled-reflection trick rather than an interference-recorded or light-field image.

• Does the display need a dark backdrop or specific lighting to read correctly, a tell for the Pepper's Ghost mechanism?
• How many viewing sides does the unit support, and is the image a single flat video reflected at an angle rather than a true volumetric scene?
• Do the vendor's own patent filings name the mechanism, since marketing pages for this product category often do not?

VNTANA's own patent names a 19th-century optical trick behind a 21st-century product, a gap between marketing language and engineering documentation worth checking for any 'hologram' display case.