Romanian entrepreneurs try to compete with Microsoft on “holoportation”

A group of Romanian entrepreneurs is trying to raise money to develop a real-time holographic telecommunications platform similar to the one Microsoft recently presented. “Simply put it's interacting in your own room with a live, real-size, full 3D holographic version of the person you're talking to,” according to the Romanian developers, who have named their project Holo See. “It’s what you’d expect to see in any sci-fi movie, only it’s happening now,” said Andrei Boruzescu, the project’s coordinator. American technology group Microsoft was the first to show the new communication technology, which they called “holoportation”, at the end of March 2016. However, the Romanians, who are working on their own and haven’t got the financial resources that Microsoft has, are not far behind. “We are currently at the stage where we have built an augmented reality app that successfully renders the full 3D 360 real size hologram of a person in real time. So the motion tracking is real time and the rendering is real time, but the hologram is prerecorded so it's not live its playback. We still need to build the real time prototype,” reads the project’s description on IndieGoGo. The Romanians need USD 200,000 to build the first live full 3D "Unbound" prototype. The Unbound Holo See kit would allow the users to capture and stream the full 3D holograms live, while the Basic kit, which the Romanians have already developed, allows to capture and stream only pre-recorded 3D holograms. The final product will include the software required as well as the equipment configuration consisting of a kit of special cameras, sensors, and lighting solution, as well as a self-lit chroma screen that allow capturing the hologram. Holo See will support most head-mounted displays such as Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Hololens, and others. These will not be included in the kit. Find out more about this project here.