There are already devices available now that hint of a logical direction for the future of laser display.
If your source material is from a computer, then it is in the digital domain.
At some point, before the scanner amps, that digital information needs to become analog. So it must be translated through a DAC.
All laser content software and hardware relies on this model.
A stream of samples is the common thread.
Think about the good-old-days of analog modems. At first they were very expensive and complex. All the computer did was feed it a stream of raw binary data. It was entirely up to the modem and its own hardware to do the actual analog conversion and communication.
Then they came out with "software" modems. There was very little hardware on the card. The driver did all the work and that driver could easily be updated without any need to change the hardware.
A wave can be just a live stream of data moving though a computer. All one needs to do is imagine it sitting in storage with a header on it. That would make it a file.
Making a wave is like a software modem. The method by which it is made is irrelevant. The hardware is a generic multi-channel DAC.
James.