Holograms and AR viewer at work



Do you remember John Anderton, a police captain who in the 2054’s Washington described in Minority Report viewed the information on potential criminals simply by shaking hands in the air, thanks to a futuristic hologram system and manual controls? Well, 2054 is still far away, but the idea of replacing office equipment with holograms has made its way.

In San Francisco, in particular, a startup, Meta, developed augmented reality devices that overlap holographic images to the real world. In this way, a user can manipulate a 3D model with his own hands, or browse web pages, send mail, write codes that float on a virtual screen.

Chinese investors like Meta

The idea, as stated in an interview with Bloomberg by Meta’s founder and Ceo, the thirty-one-year-old Israeli Meron Gribetz (who you can see in this photo of Abhi Suryawanshi), is to “abolish the tyranny of the modern office” replacing monitors, keyboards and tomorrow the same locations with holograms.

Gribetz decided to start from his employees, who more and more often see their cubicles replaced with virtual reality and holograms devices. Founded in 2012, Meta collected 50 million dollars last year from Chinese investors like the Lenovo group and Tencent Holding, confirming China’s interest in the race to virtual reality and augmented reality.

Goal : an AR more usable than an iPhone



Meta’s ultimate goal is to make its augmented reality technology an extension of the real world that allows people to interact with holograms in the same way that they interact with real objects. Gribetz has no doubt that the AR hardware will quickly become a widespread product, so he decided to focus on perfecting the software, with the goal of making reality augmented ten times easier to use than an Apple iPhone.

The beginnings were not the easiest: the first tests were performed on Meta engineers, who used software that was not always compatible with holographic devices. In addition, many found it difficult to continue to develop codes while they were testing devices which for some created confusion and gave the feeling like being on a boat.

The beginnings were not easy

In the end, Gribetz had to give his engineers to go back to using computers and keyboards, experimenting with his new devices on smaller groups of employees of other functions like marketing or sales.

Gradually, hand tracking and image stability have improved, while Meta employees thanks to a company hackathon developed many apps including a 3D data visualization tool and an app for a holographic post-it.

It has been realized that for now, the technology of augmented reality and holograms facilitate the carrying out of some works, but they make other tasks more difficult. If convincing Meta employees to adopt holographic virtual reality devices it was in some cases difficult, you can well understand how difficult it is to convince the general public.

The perfect office according to Meta

This is why many companies in the sector use an “evangelist” (those who are familiar with Second Life maybe will remember that for years Linden Lab too used some like Reuben Steiger), who for Meta is the vice president, Ryan Pamplin.

If in reality the office, like that of Gribetz, is “minimal”, with only a white desk with some prize on it and a few newspapers, Wearing his headset, though, Pamplin enters an ideal office, with photos of his girlfriend on the walls, a Steve Jobs holographic bust, a Tesla 3 model floating nearby and a YouTube video of Katy Perry playing from a midair screen. John Anderton would have found it very well.

If you wanna know how it will end, continue to follow Mondivirtuali.it, also through our account on Twitter and our fanpage on Facebook (but remember: Mondivirtuali is on Flickr, on Pinterest, on Scoop.it on Paper.li and also on Youtube too) and maybe subscribe our newsletter!

