Local holograph company to team with Nevada State College

For the first time anywhere in the nation, a new technology will beam free-floating holographic images, viewable in 360 degrees, in a college classroom, according to Andy Kuniyuki, Ph.D., Associate Dean of Nevada State College’s School of Liberal Arts and Sciences. It’s scheduled to happen at NSC in the fall semester, with help from 360BrandVision, a southwest Las Vegas-based company.

The company has made its way into movie theaters, trade shows, product launches and special events internationally, with products such as holographic movie posters (“holo-posters”), a digital graffiti wall and holographic video and motion graphics. Even smartphones and tablet application technologies beam the
3-D images, which also will soon bounce up via NSC’s online courses.

“As soon as I saw their capabilities, I was immediately convinced that this was what we needed to do,” said Kuniyuki.

DNA offers one example of how the technology makes a difference, he explained. The 3-D image of the molecule floating in air — along with the ability to rotate and zero in on its sides — reveals information that isn’t accurately portrayed on paper.

“It’s very similar to saying, everybody recognizes that a face has certain components,” he said. “You’re looking for eyes, a nose, mouth, ears, eyelashes. But there are a lot of different possible eyes in terms of eye color and eye shape. By combining these in different ways, we end up with very distinctly different faces that we all recognize. If we can then demonstrate this with this type of technology, it will become readily apparent that when we’re looking at sections, it’s as if we’re looking at different faces. I think that ‘Aha!’ moment will be right there.”

Attendees at NSC’s 10th anniversary gala on Oct. 19 encountered that moment when a rendition of a proposed new nursing education and science building zoomed out of nowhere, floating and rotating in high resolution. People hushed, then gasped, Kuniyuki recalled.

Other companies are working with holographic technology, said Nick Vilardell, senior vice president of business development and co-founder of 360BrandVision. But, he added, without exception, they capture their image in an enclosed setting, whether it’s a box or a kiosk that requires the viewer to look inside.

With 360BrandVision images, he said, “the depth comes from being able to see through the image into the rest of the world, and you wonder how that image is being created, because you see the rest of the world behind it. And that’s a huge point of differentiation.”

Vilardell and Ruben Moreno, CEO and co-founder, began their relationship as
7-year-olds playing pingpong at their local YMCA. The movie “Star Wars” entered and exited their childhood — along with the iconic holographic image of Princess Leia sending out an SOS. But it wasn’t until approximately 2006 that the two began to think about 3-D projections as a serious venture. One of Vilardell’s corporate sales clients had asked him to find a technology that would impress clients at a trade show.

Decades after Princess Leia, the company’s founders now have their eye on resurrecting the past in the form of free-floating, talking images of historical figures. And, although NSC will start out using the technology in higher education classes such as biology, a long-term goal of the NSC/360BrandVision partnership will be to create a template for teaching grades kindergarten through 12.

Students in NSC’s School of Education may have an opportunity to help teach courses using the technology. Others pursuing a visual media degree may learn and then use the technology in one of the company’s many ventures.

“We’re excited about the fact that we are going to be a significant pipeline for skilled workers to help diversify the economy in this area, by helping 360BrandVision build out,” said Kuniyuki.

One venture for which the company signed a contract in 2012: creating holographic movie trailers for 600 theaters in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Americans can expect that experience in 2013, Moreno said.

As for sweeping social impact, the fields of medicine and health sciences might be ripe for a revolution in the way doctors and patients interact. The height of success, according to Moreno, would be the all-pervasive presence of the technology in people’s lives — whether it’s the surgeon making real-time holographic adjustments to show a patient what she’d look like with one nose job versus another, or interactive gaming.

“There’s far more that can be delivered and far more ways of engaging people’s imagination, and inviting them into a different level of creativity,” Kuniyuki said.

For more information, visit 360brandvision.com.