DARPA has announced its "Urban Photonic Sandtable Display" (UPSD) will allow for viewing glasses free 3D images in real time. The display supports monochrome and color. The colors, shown in the image above, represent the various heights of terrain or building structures. Up to 20 viewers can see and interact with the display, allowing for rotation, zoomed, and frozen. The display is scalable going from 6 inches to 6 feet, diagonally. 12 inches of depth can be viewed in the display. For clarity, that 12 inches would represent the height of the tallest structure in the image, if scaled to its maximum.

The UPSD currently works in tandem with DARPA's3D LIDAR, Light Detection and Ranging, used in the high altitude imaging system LIDAR Operations Experiment HALOE. HALOE is being used in Afghanistan providing high-resolution 3D data. The UPSD will allow for the exploration of that data. Now after completing a 5 year research project, DARPA is taking the UPSD to 3 different military installations to start its use in real world applications.

Just like in the movies.

Eavesdropper

pic via DARPA.