Fairy Lights in Femtoseconds: Tangible Holographic Plasma (SIGGRAPH)

Using the term thin air is misleading IMO. I saw a slightly different version of this a few years ago [1]. It basically used pulsed laser to create plasma at certain x,y,z without any additional reflective medium added to the environment. However it's crazy loud [2]. From the Nature paper [3] it seems to work on similar principles with the drawback that you need "light scattering (or absorbing and generating) surfaces" instead of free air. In other words you still need some medium for projection/reflection, like a smoke cloud for example: "it is unlikely that the display would function outdoors without an enclosure unless particles were much more strongly confined or steps were taken to refresh trapped particles regularly" [1] [this video] [2] [link] [3] [link]