Never heard of Oliver Kreylos? You will. He’s just transformed the Kinect from a hands-free game controller into a holographic camera. The demo blew many minds, quickly getting a million YouTube hits. He didn’t think it was that impressive: check out what he’s working on now.

Before we look at the newer video, here’s the one that caused all the fuss. You’ll probably need to watch it a few times to take it all in. I did.

Commenters about Kreylos’s postings (he’s a researcher from the Geology departmentUniversity of California, Davis, working at IDAV, the Institute for Data Analysis and Visualisation) want him to try the same thing with  two connected Kinects. Not a priority, he says (although someone has given him a second one, so he’s going to try it anyway).

No, he’s got some other ideas. His latest involves combining the Kinect, the Wii and nanotechnology.

The result is at least as stunning as the first video. And it looks like he’s hardly begun exploring the possibilities.

He says he’s just done an interview with the New York Times, hence the formal shirt. I wonder if they’ll ask him about his venture into ballet (combined with motion capture). Here’s a video of that.

If, like me you were fascinated by that 3d nanotech structure that he was creating (using the Nanotech Construction Kit, a piece of software he wrote himself) here’s a video of him finishing the job. This time, he’s doing it without a Kinect or a Wii (he’s also got another fascinating video on his work with the Wii), and believe it or not, it looks even more impressive (more detailed imagery).