“You know the hologram from Star Wars…?”
THAT’S HOW THIS STORY BEGINS.
2009. Thursday Night Lab Sessions in Will’s Shed.
Having very nearly blown themselves up putting 25,000 volts through an electric jug, after abandoning a project to harness chaos theory and a colony of ants to control share trading on the stock market, founders Will Tamblyn and Gavin Smith were exploring what adventure to embark on next.
Why, one might well ask? And that’s exactly the right question…
What drives the explorer to seek out new frontiers, the inventor to try to engineer the impossible? An appetite for crazy, clearly. But also we dream. We see things for what they could be, not what they are.
To take what has only been imagined, and bring it to life – that is our purpose.
We venture into the unknown because
maybe, just maybe, what we discover can
change the world.
And so we set out to engineer the
Hologram
To do so we had to figure out how to write light to a point in space.
After years of experimentation, we had a hardware prototype that showed a glimpse of possibility. But the graphics engine required to drive such a display was far more advanced than anything that had ever been created. So we turned to renowned programmer Ken Silverman, who joined the founding team to create the core graphics engine.
And the impossible became no longer so.
Hologram: from the ancient greek ‘holos gramma’, the whole message.
As we explored, we discovered two things that would shape our vision…
Shared perspective brings us closer together.
Despite all the wondrous things possible with VR and AR, they are ultimately isolating experiences. Disconnecting. And though technology has enabled us to connect with people across the other side of the world, still this only leaves us all further apart. The very nature of holographic display means people can gather around a projection in a way that screens simply don’t allow, enabling not only new perspectives, but shared perspective.
Adding another dimension brings greater perspective.
Being able to view something from a different angle, a new perspective – it’s how we solve the insolvable. In the hands of the great minds of the world of today, and tomorrow, the holographic display could open up infinite possibilities.
And if shared perspective and diversity of thinking can lead to a better understanding of our differences, who knows what is possible for humankind with what we’re developing?
Imagine a world where all the dimensions of the real world are no longer trapped in a 2D screen. Where we can bring things to life through light in three dimensions, no goggles, no glasses…
A team of medical researchers gathered around the hologram of a patient’s DNA sequence, collaborating, exploring from every angle.
Your daughter sitting across the lounge with the whole family when she calls from overseas.
Children learning and solving problems together in the classroom, interacting not only with the projection, but with each other.
After 8 years of development, we had built the world’s first true 3D holographic display.
The concept of a volumetric display has been taken in many different directions, from VR and AR to autosteroscopic screens.
Where putting on a VR headset lets you visualise data in an immersive way, placing the viewer inside the scene, our technology instead captures the scene and models it using hundreds of millions of points of light.
We’re not simply creating a 3D view, we’re rendering a 3D object.
The result is a fully interactive holographic light field that can be viewed from any angle, without headgear or special glasses. In a world where 2D screens have the potential to drive people apart, we are reigniting the campfire experience that brings people together.
We’ve opened up a fully featured 3D API for developers around the world to be able to write their own applications, to bring to life their own imaginings.
Students at Harvard, MIT, and the University of Twente in the Netherlands all have Voxon VX1 displays and are constantly exploring new ideas and using the greater and shared perspective that comes with holographic display to solve new problems.
We’ve worked with some of the world’s leading minds and brands.
We are dedicated to exploring new possibilities in education, communication, entertainment, gaming, advertising, medical imaging and the automotive industry.
Our vision for the world where the hologram, like in Star Wars, is a reality in our lives – it’s here.
But it’s only just the beginning. Where we go from here – well, that’s up to you…