For the past few years, Google has been developing 3D video technology that would allow distant colleagues, friends or family to chat as though they were in the same room. Now the tech giant has rebranded Project Starline to Google Beam to prepare for commercial rollout.

As with Starline, Google has taken the wraps off the Beam platform at its annual developer conference. The concept remains about the same, but the technology has evolved to the point of market readiness.

Essentially, the idea is that a user would face a large screen with a bunch of cameras capturing different angles and tracking head movement "down to the millimeter" at 60 frames per second. The person on the other end of the chat is sat in front of the same kind of setup.