2Pac Hologram Performs at Coachella 2012

You can argue on ethics and taste, but you can’t say 2Pac’s posthumous performance at Coachella as hologram isn’t technically impressive.

NSFW language of course, but worth watching for the technical achievement alone (2Pac on stage at around the 32:00 minute mark, shorter version here).

The Verge has some details on the system used at Coachella and some of its (visible) limitations:

Executing the Carey illusion relied on both modern day techniques and an old magician’s trick dating back to the 19th Century. First, a video was composed by New York SFX company MPC using a mixture of live footage, wire-framing, and CGI. This was then fed into Musion’s holographic technology, which projects the image onto a special foil. The foil is based on principles set out in the old magician’s illusion Pepper’s Ghost, which trick audiences into thinking they’re viewing a person or object rather than a simple reflection.

The Atlantic has a great photo of the onstage performance.

Speaking of 2Pac, here’s a Top 50 playlist for Rdio automatically generated through Playlistdio.