Not too long ago, Elon Musk was talking on Twitter about wanting to design rocket parts using something awfully like the 3D hologram interface we’ve seen in Iron Man.
Today he posted a video showing off Space X’s custom Iron Man-inspired interface for using hand gestures in the air to design rockets.
Musk revealed to Iron Man director Jon Favreau on Twitter last month that the Space X team had seen the interface in the movie and decided to build it in real life.
The system uses the Leap Motion controller to track hand gestures. Implementations of the system include a version using 3D glasses, a free-standing glass projection (as seen in Iron Man) and the Oculus Rift headset for the full virtual reality experience. To top it all off, the team then printed the part in titanium using a 3D laser metal printer.
While this might not seem like much, but it definitely has brought us much closer to achieving the futuristic tech we’ve seen in the likes of Minority Report and Iron Man – and who else better to do it than the real world Iron Man inspiration – Elon Musk.
