Euclideon Changes Name and Adds New Applications

A few years ago, Australia based Euclideon Holographics made the news with the production of its multi-user hologram table, which allowed four people to interact simultaneously with images apparently projected onto a table surface (see HN September 2021). Since then the company has changed its name (to Axiom Holographics) and added new applications to its product offerings.

Holographic zoo, images colourised for clarity (© Axiom Holographics).

The system operates without the viewers having to wear clunky headsets which can have the effect of taking you out of the immersive, real-world experience. Instead, the company has produced sleek, motion-tracking glasses that look like sunglasses.

Within the glasses there are sensors that are constantly calculating the position of the viewer relative to the table. The relative viewer/table position is communicated to a computer within the table which calculates the perspectives that are consistent with the viewer’s position.

Holographic zoo

Since the change of name, Axiom Holographics has added entertainment sectors to its existing commercial business streams and opened a family attraction in Brisbane, Australia. It’s a kind of ‘holographic zoo’ built around a much larger version of Euclideon’s multi-viewpoint 3D display table and graphics engine.

Each viewer, standing in front of an attraction, perceives a 3D image that appears to float in the air and stays in place when they move their head or walk around it. The stereoscopic fusion of perspective views remains faithful for multiple viewers at different viewing positions.

The 1,500 sqm (16,000 sq ft) holographic zoo includes two 20m (65ft)-long ‘tunnels’ with screens all along three of the walls, and some 5m (16ft) smaller rooms with screens on all four walls – although the ceilings have no screens attached.

Axiom has created 25 different tunnel experiences, from African safaris to Arctic journeys to prehistoric landscapes full of dinosaurs and undersea environments, as well as nine different options for the smaller rooms, including escape room-type situations featuring fictional characters like Dracula and Frankenstein.

It’s also built in some non-visual effects, including arctic breezes and animal smells. And since the images are computer-generated, Axiom has been able to play with scale, enlarging some small creatures to give a unique perspective on them.

There’s also a ‘hologram bridge’ – effectively a bridge over a large screen designed to make you feel like you’re walking over a 50m (164ft) drop into a canyon, although that can be changed to whatever the graphics can be programmed to depict.

Additionally, there are 11 different four-player holographic arcade games, inside another 5m room, and Pepper’s Ghost-style projections onto silk-screen in the restaurant area which can be viewed without glasses, as visitors eat.

Limitations

Axiom is constantly changing the content to create new experiences for visitors but there are limitations when it comes to doing multi-user experiences using this type of intensive graphics rendering technology.

Principally, the displays can only handle a limited number of different images at a time. With each person needing a separate image for both eyes, you’re limited to five people at a time in each of the rooms and tunnels, so it becomes a time-limited 15-minute experience in each and about 90 minutes in total.

‘Hologram entertainment centres are a fantastic way to be teleported to places that you could not normally visit, and you can experience things you would normally never see,’ says Axiom CEO Bruce Dell in a press release.

‘For example’, he added, ‘I do not think people really know just how big a whale is, but when they see a giant life-sized whale swim past them at hologram zoo, they all seem to pause in reverent silence because it is something that they would normally never get the opportunity to see in real life. Our first Hologram Zoo ¹ is a test site to perfect the technology, we will then be opening hologram entertainment centres all over the world.’ 

The hologram zoo will be open in Brisbane until the New Year, after which time the company says it’ll be ‘ready to open centres in Japan, Texas and Europe,’ and is looking to expand from there.