Scoops are rare in an age where nothing is hidden on social media or the web, but we recently came across something that seemed to warrant the tag exclusive: one of the pioneers and leading developers in this emerging field is selling its groundbreaking portfolio of patents in “natural” 3D holography for the naked eye. The technology is applicable to direct view displays or projectors, HMDs or head-up-displays (HUDs) for automotive to provide precise distance cues.
Sources close to the matter have revealed that this highly cited portfolio encompasses over 500 patents across 100 families, including about 100 open patent applications, signaling an unprecedented leap in 3D holographic technology. It’s a pretty inconceivable haul of technology that just made us take notice. The intent is an outright sale to an operating company which has true holography in its sights and would like to get to market a lot quicker. Reportedly, a select number of such companies are currently evaluating the portfolio. So no NPEs please.
The company, which has been at the cutting edge of natural 3D holography for over two decades, holds what is arguably the most comprehensive solution to the limitations of current 3D display technologies. Its innovations are known to reduce computational requirements by up to 100,000x, enhance resolution, remove speckle, and provide unlimited depth perception, addressing the critical challenges that have plagued the industry.
The application of these patents and the sheer breadth of them is very impressive. While we would be the last people to endorse an investment in AR or VR, for instance, this goes way beyond that by embracing direct view displays which are immersive with the naked eye. It is a portfolio that opens up markets and creates a defense for future display technologies for GPUs, transparent displays, IT displays, automotive, medical, games, and many more applications.
Another unexpected aspect of the portfolio is that it not only teaches how to compute the holograms very efficiently but also how to build the displays to deliver these holograms at high quality. For example, it includes dedicated IP for diffractive beam steering components, coherent wavefront Back Light Units, optical function Volume Grating foils and Spatial Light modulators – all based on an existing commercial supply chain.
The company’s ground breaking research compresses the size of the hologram projected onto the viewer’s pupils roughly to the same size as the human pupil itself through a combination of eye tracking and beam-steering to direct this so-called Viewing Window in real time to the pupils of the viewer, while also effectively addressing challenges related to head movement, solving some of the critical technology requirements for delivering holography to HMDs and direct view displays
This dramatic reduction in the size of the Viewing Window (hologram as projected on the pupil), in combination with a patented computational approach reduces the hologram compute by approximately 100,000 X. This gives rise to a new kind of compute unit which the company calls an HPU (Holographic Processing Unit) residing in the display – complementing the GPU on the host side.
The IP deals with holographic pre-processing units (HPU-P) and computation units (HPU-C), and are the culmination of extensive research and development efforts. The company’s portfolio is not just a collection of patents; it’s a gateway to using 3D technology in a broad number of use cases. As work from home becomes a permanent part of many of our lives, and while on-line gaming popularity also continues to increase, 3D holographic interactions with people and content will become the next big evolution in display technologies. Apple has given us an early glimpse of this with their recently released Spatial Personas virtual avatars on the Vision Pro.
3D Holography isn’t easy. We think the company was as good a technology company as you can expect and as good at holography as you would hope a top developer could be. It probably lacked the execution and capital chops, or the heaps of resources needed to take its tech to that next commercial step
And if you are wondering who the company behind this rich portfolio of IP was, it is SeeReal. A company who has been synonymous for memorable holographic demonstrations during the past decade.
Regardless, it is not often that you see a portfolio like this. We can’t remember the last time this happened. Please send an email to [email protected] if you want to find out more from the IP bankers the company has appointed.
