Eon Technology puts holograms at hand

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Eon Reality specializes in gee-whiz 3-D displays for businesses.
COLIN STEWART
Innovation
Register columnist
cstewart@ocregister.com Tom Cruise in the 2002 movie "Minority Report" tracked down criminals by calling up 2-D images on a transparent screen and controlling the display with hand gestures in the air.

That was science fiction, set in the year 2054 in Washington, D.C.

In science fact, I called up 3-D images on a transparent screen and controlled them by moving my hands in the air. That was last week in Irvine.

I could enlarge the images, rotate them, or even make my way through a three-dimensional landscape.

I was using the Eon TouchLight, one of the newest products from Eon Reality, a company whose software powers gee-whiz 3-D displays for down-to-earth business purposes.

VIDEO: Click here to see Eon's products in action.


Eon's specialty is 3-D, but it was founded on a different type of vision – an insight into where technology is heading – which is crucial for innovative entrepreneurs. In 1999, for Eon co-founders Dan Lejerskar and Mats W. Johansson, that meant buying the rights to early-stage 3-D software for PCs, betting that the power of personal computers would grow fast enough to make the gamble pay off.

"People looked at us funny when we told them what we'd done," Johansson recalls.

It turned out to be a good bet, at least to the point where Eon has been profitable for four years and now has a wide array of PC-based three-dimensional display products.

THE BIG TIME
Eon still has just 46 employees, yet it can claim many Fortune 500 companies as customers. Its clients include Toyota, Boeing, Airbus, Suzuki and Bechtel.

Eon also has big partners. Microsoft invented the hand-gesture controls for the TouchLight. Christie Digital in Cypress supplies digital projectors for many 3-D displays. Nvidia makes the graphics processors; Hewlett-Packard, the computers; and Philips, the monitors.

In cooperation with Microsoft and Philips, Eon joined with HP, Christie and Nvidia to form the Interactive Digital Center consortium, which markets products and coordinates the design of new ones.

"If a company tells Eon it wants to do a high-class visual display, Eon says, 'Christie is our partner.' We do the same for them," says Dave Fluegeman, vice president of Christie's simulation and visualization division.

"We're starting to see the fruits of that."

So far, Eon still can claim only a sliver of a large and growing market.

The Insight Media market research firm estimates a total of $43 billion was spent worldwide in 2003 on all kinds of interactive 3-D technologies, including games and military simulations. It projects $77 billion in sales by 2007.

Eon focuses on what it calls "interactive visual content management software" and projects that this year's revenues will total $17 million. Its primary direct competitor is publicly tradedViewpoint Corp. of New York, which had $26 million in revenue last year, both from business displays like Eon's and from its software for Internet graphics.

FUTURISTIC DEVICES
Eon's products include the ICrystal holographic display, which Lexus used to unveil the IS model last year in Times Square. Another is the IPresence teleconferencing tool, which lets users make eye contact. And there's the HoloPodium, which creates the image of a speaker on a transparent panel.

"Our main markets are companies with complex things to show – aerospace companies, medical companies, vehicle manufacturers," says Lejerskar, chairman of Eon. "The pain we're trying to address is how to display products that are difficult to transport."

As examples, he shows 3-D images of a Pratt & Whitney jet engine, a Honeywell turbocharger, and an interactive view of Serra de Estrela National Park in Portugal, complete with a model of a castle that a cybertourist can walk through.

"We can show people the inside of airplanes that don't exist yet," says Johansson, Eon 's president.

That's what aircraft maker Bombardier did at a trade show in May, using Eon 's ICatcher.

The ICatcher display looks like a standard 3-D movie and is viewed through special 3-D glasses. But unlike a movie that's the same each time it's shown, the ICatcher uses Eon software that lets viewers choose how to redesign the image.

"Bombardier would sit customers down and show what they could do with the interior of the aircraft. That's powerful stuff," says Christie Digital's Fluegeman.

Eon software is designed to simulate real-life effects, such as objects that fall to the ground if they are dropped and doors that must be opened to enter a room. The result sometimes looks like a 3-D computer game, but the 3-D objects in an Eon display are based on physical reality, not on a tightly controlled fantasy environment.

Eon most often bases its 3-D objects on the computer-assisted design data that companies already have.

"The CAD data of a business is a hidden asset," says Lejerskar. "We use it to bring a product catalog to life."


From idea to reality

Who: Eon TouchLight
What: Interactive 2-D/3-D display controlled by hand motions.
Why: For business presentations, marketing, training.
Price: $50,000
When: Conceived August 2005. Launched July 2006
Who: Dan Lejerskar of Eon Reality; Andy Wilson of Microsoft; support staff.
Where the idea came from:

Wilson invented TouchLight as a system of infrared sensors so a computer user could control a computer cursor with hand gestures. Microsoft presented it at the 2005 Siggraph Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Technologies in Los Angeles.

"They had the patent but didn't know what to use it for," said Lejerskar. "We saw it as a natural to use with 3-D."

In August 2005, Lejerskar proposed to Microsoft that Eon Reality develop such a system.

The go-ahead:In January 2006, Microsoft expressed interest and attended a presentation of Eon's holographic technology. The deal was signed in May.

Eon staff time dedicated to the project:Minimal, because Eon software works with many display systems. Microsoft delivered its demonstration model in June and explained the algorithm that Eon software would need to work with. Software revisions took only a few days, so Eon TouchLight was launched the next month.

Crucial decisions:Wilson and Eon staff met to choose which hand gestures would be most intuitive for users.

What's the competition?Specialized gloves that control 3-D displays, mostly in a research setting. Touch-screen technologies, mostly controlled by one finger or one control wand.

Protection against matching innovations:Microsoft patent; Microsoft license to Eon.

What remains to be done? Survey early customers, seeking ways to improve the product. Seek to improve hand gestures for different types of imagery. Launch version that works with Microsoft PowerPoint.

Sales: Since the launch in July, six have been sold; more are in negotiation.

What's next? Combine the Eon TouchLight interactive display with the Eon IPresence teleconferencing tool and the Eon ICrystal holographic display so two people in a teleconference can control a holographic 3-D display that appears to float between them.