The crowd at the popular Coachella music festival was left in awe on Sunday night, when legendary "Tupac Shakur," who was murdered in 1996, appeared on stage looking freakishly real.

A hologram of the deceased rapper appeared on stage alongside Tupac's former collaborators Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg. Complete with "Thug Life" written across his stomach, as well as the rest of Tupac's tattoos, the three-dimensional rapper appeared shirtless across the stage, yelling "What the [f] is up, Coachella?" in a voice stunningly similar to the rapper.

The holographic image then proceeded to perform two famous Tupac tracks, the solo "Hail Mary" and "2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted," for which Snoop Dogg joined "him" on stage. The virtual Tupac moved back and forth across the stage in an extremely realistic and life-like manner, as seen in the five minute video posted on YouTube. After the surprising performance, an angelic chorus started singing as Tupac put two fingers up in the air to the crowd, before vanishing in a burst of light.

The virtual rendition of the late rapper had Twitter buzzing with chatter all through Sunday night and into Monday, driving "Tupac" and "Coachella" among the top U.S. trends. The hologram even has a Twitter account now, @HologramTupac, with more than 13,000 followers.

The unusual performance Sunday night was made possible by AV Concepts, the San Diego-based company behind Tupac's "resurrection." The company said the technology employed used uncompressed HD video that can be projected as holograms, or as a 3-D image, creating the optical illusion of a real-live person. The effect was reportedly created by mixing existing footage of the rapper onstage, splicing his moves together to create the new performance. The resulting images were then projected onto a reflective surface on the floor, to complete the optical illusion. According to AV Concepts, the hologram was months in the making.

"It's amazing, no question about it," David Brady, head of Duke University's Imaging and Spectroscopy Program, told Ars Technica. "The impressive thing here is how life-like and detailed and natural it seems, and that's just an outcome of advances in computer rendering [rather] than display."

The 2012 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival began Friday, April 13, and ends Sunday, April 22.

Check out the amazing Tupac Shakur hologram below. And let us know whether you were there to see it live.

(reported by Alexandra Burlacu, edited by Surojit Chatterjee)