Where did the audience see it?
USC’s Virtual Graphics Lab draws a clear distinction between CNN’s 2008 broadcast effect and the Tupac appearance at Coachella in 2012. It describes the CNN effect as an image composited for television viewers, not a three-dimensional display present in the studio. It identifies the Tupac stage appearance as a Pepper’s Ghost illusion.
These examples are often grouped together because both presented a person who was not physically there. Their viewing conditions were different. A home viewer saw the final camera image; a concertgoer looked into a designed stage scene. The common label hides the most useful production fact.
A camera can complete the illusion
A camera selects one viewpoint and turns it into a flat image. That can make a carefully positioned effect look persuasive in a clip even when someone elsewhere in the room would see something different. This is not a defect in every production; sometimes the broadcast is the intended experience.
For procurement, specify whether success is judged in person, through a camera or both. Ask for a wide view of the installation as well as the promotional angle. If the audience will move, observe the transition between positions rather than assessing a single still frame.
Name the intended experience
USC describes its own system as automultiscopic: a display delivering multiple views without glasses. That provides a third category beside broadcast compositing and stage reflection. Similar subjects on screen do not imply interchangeable hardware or identical depth cues.
A useful production brief therefore begins with a sentence about the audience: people in a theatre, people passing a shop window, or people watching a stream. Add the required scale and whether they need to move around the image. Once that is explicit, technology names become easier to evaluate. The historical lesson is to ask who actually saw what, from where, before choosing a machine.
Sources & dates
Factual descriptions are drawn from these sources. Practical evaluation suggestions and interpretations are Presence Atlas editorial analysis; no hands-on test is claimed. Supplier claims are identified as such.
USC Institute for Creative Technologies · Original publication: undated · Retrieved 16 September 2026
Musion · Original publication: undated · Retrieved 16 September 2026
Editorial preparation: 16 September 2026. Actual site publication: pending review. This is a retrospective, not reporting published by us in 2012.