When will holographic communications go mainstream?
Capgemini Engineering
Capgemini Engineering, the leader in engineering and R&D services, helps clients unleash their R&D potential.
Holographic communication is frequently defined as the real-time capturing, encoding, transporting, and remote rendering of 3D representations of persons anchored in space.?
It offers a much more immersive experience than 2D video screens, offering the subtleties of non-verbal communication, and the sense of presence and immediacy that enhances the quality of human interaction.?
According to telecommunications industry research, more than 50% of smartphone users expect this technology to be available within a few years1. As a result, 3D holographic augmented reality (AR) is gaining traction in consumer entertainment. Its application for national/international events, such as musical concerts and political rallies, is more frequent and widespread. But consumers are not the only target. There is also a strong potential for business and enterprise use, which has accelerated with the advent of the era of remote/hybrid working models.
The potential use cases of holographic communication are both diverse and exciting. Imagine a world where meetings with your remote colleagues and clients are fully immersive, where virtual assistants materialize as holograms to help you when you are cooking, learning languages, or teaching kids, and gaming takes you to new dimensions of interaction…??But the ability for holographic communications to go mainstream depends on several key factors.
One is the availability and price of capturing and rendering devices. AR devices devices are already massively available, yet they require this additional piece of equipment that makes the experience more natural and fluid.?
The latest generation of holograms is now overcoming this limitation. For example, equipment like HOLOGAUZE offers the audience a seamless 360° holographic rendering without any extra device. Those holograms are very realistic but quite complex to deliver. The shooting area requires an intensive light tuning in a black-box environment, with customized streaming software to encode and decode activities, including ultra-low latency audio and video protocols. And for the rendering,?the projection is created by combining up to four laser projectors with 25K+ lumen. As a result, those solutions are costly and still limited to exceptional uses.
Second, communications networks must cope with the transmission capabilities that 3D holographic communications demand—rendering one person as a hologram needs around one million points. Producing this at a 30 frame-per-second transmission (the typical video conferencing streaming rate) and the total bandwidth requirement for a single-person hologram totals up to between 300Mbs and 3Gbs in ultra-low latency. Moving this amount of data on wired or wireless networks will require the setup of new compression systems, together with the scaled deployment of next-generation 5G & Edge networks.?
Last but not least, questions remain on the human factor?and likeliness to adopt such technologies at scale. Enterprises will likely use holographic communication to improve and optimize productivity and efficiency, but in the end, users and consumers tend to select the communication option that best satisfies their needs and goals, characterized by emotional / excitement and practicalities. Holograms will need to prove efficient and fun and not invasive or weird.
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Battery formation sales engineer and consultant with Chroma ATE, BS in Chemical Engineering
1 周This will be the death of people with migraines ?? mainstream holographics will be my apocalypse.