It's like a glimpse into the future when you see Doom played on a volumetric display that looks like a hologram.

The original Doom was a milestone in the history PC gaming. It's not news, but Doom's enduring popularity in the past 30 years means that it is a piece of software one must use to experiment with coding and electronics projects. It was the future of PC gaming when I saw it on a volumetric screen.

A volumetric display is a device consisting of a strip of LEDs that are rapidly rotated. The image created when the lights change in a streamed-pattern fills up a volume before you. It's a holographic display, similar to Star Wars.

Ancient, a YouTuber who goes by the name Ancient, has been obsessed with getting Doom running on all sorts of gadgets and displays. But their recent adventures with volumetric displays have been genuinely fascinating. I first saw their attempts to 'volumise' Doom two months ago, but a recent posted video showed how much progress the modder had made.

The volumetric display is quite small, so the draw distance is very short. Ancient's homemade display is small, so the draw distance is very low. This is worse than the first 3D game on the original PlayStation. This video shows how the game and display compare.

The resolution of the display is also quite limited. It would be simple to add more LEDs to the display to increase the number pixels (or should we say voxels? It would be easy to add more LEDs, or voxels (or pixels, given the nature of the display) in order to increase the number of pixels.

The final issue is noise. Both the motor that drives rotation and the whooshing air when the plastic dome has been removed as the display whips about are quite distracting.

These are all perfectly reasonable and I do not mention them to criticize what Ancient has achieved. All of their work is self-funded, and they have done it themselves. It's impressive. Check out the Voxon VX2 for $6,800 to see what can be done with a lot of money. This Doom demo is a lot better.

While we won't be replacing our high-resolution monitors with a spinny globe anytime soon, I would say that this is a glimpse of what the future holds for PC gaming. All I need now is enough space to fit a volumetric screen large enough to show the full draw distance of Doom. It's time to tear and rip!