Minecraft creator Markus ‘Notch’ Persson famously called them “snake oil salesmen“, but now Australian company Euclideon, who famously promised to revolutionise video game graphics with their ‘Infinite Detail’ engine, is back with a completely different type of technology.
A technology designed to compete with virtual reality.
Euclideon is working on Holograms.
More precisely Euclideon is opening a new centre in the Gold Coast called ‘Holoverse’ — a 1500 square meter centre with 40 rooms dedicated to Hologram gaming experiences. Euclideon is calling it “the world’s first holographic entertainment center”.
According to a press release:
The centre is called “Holoverse” and visitors will be able to go back in time to ancient Egypt, walk with the dinosaurs, visit the planets, fight robots or turn in to dragons to battle there friends in the sky[sic], ( they will even see their own holographic wings flapping on their backs).
“We are not using VR helmets,” says Euclideon CEO Bruce Dell, “we use a totally different sort of technology were [sic] a person has no screens over their eyes, and the objects are projected to appear in the air.”
From what we can tell, Holoverse is a combination of multiple different types of technology, including Euclideon’s own ‘Infinite Detail’ engine, which is used to create the visuals.
“Finland was once a snowy little country that no one thought about very much, then Nokia arose there and made them the world leader in Mobile phones for 15 years,” said Bruce Dell, in a statement. “In the same way I feel Australia isn’t just a country, it’s a continent and we should start acting that way. I intend to make us rise above our reputation as a big farm and a big mine, and make us the world leaders in Holographic technology.
The Holoverse centre opens June 4. It costs $50 for a 37 minute session. You can book here.
Euclideon believes its technology is far superior to VR headsets currently on the market. As per a ‘technology comparison’ in its Holoverse press release:
— VR helmets put bright screens over your eyes. With hologram technology you wear normal 3d glasses that have no screens.
— VR helmets have you attached to a computer via a cord, in hologram rooms you walk around freely.
— VR helmets block you from seeing your own body. In a hologram room you really are in a room with holograms all around you so if you reach out your hands to touch a fish that swims past your hand goes straight through it.
— VR helmets make a portion of the public feel quite sick. Hologram technology does not report a similar sickness problem.
Euclideon believes this technology is “a major achievement for humanity”.
It’s been a strange road for Euclideon. The last time we checked in, Euclideon was — bizarrely — working in the Geospatial Industry and had made many roles within the company redundant. Euclideon has been completely silent since then. This is the first we’ve heard of the company is over two years.
The Holoverse concept seems strange, almost to the point of parody. Certainly the idea that this technology is a “major achievement for humanity” is overblown and does little to dispel Notch’s assertion that Euclideon are “snake oil salesmen”. The press release and documents shown to us betray a strangeness about the whole project.
For example:
Australia is normally known for kangaroos, mining and exporting food, it’s not often seen as a world leader in technology, but we intend to change all that. Australia isn’t just a country it’s a continent and we think we should start acting that way.
And from Bruce’s bio:
Bruce could not do computers at school because the Art and computer subjects had overlapping times, and so he had to teach himself computers at home. Having no grades in computers he could not go to university for the subject either and so he continued to learn in his own time. Whilst he does not encourage anyone to avoid university education he does say in his case it meant that instead of being taught the standard answers to computer problems he was forced to create solutions to such problems himself, many of these answers were different from what the rest of the world were using, in fact time as now shown many of Bruce’s answers are in fact better then what the rest of the world was using.
It’s hard to believe this was written by a professional company, much less a company on the brink of a “major achievement for humanity”. It sounds like a terrible Shark Tank pitch. One can’t imagine Elon Musk releasing copy like that.
And yet, we’ve spoken to people who have worked at Euclideon. Even former employees, after being made redundant, have testified to the effectiveness of Euclideon’s technology. “I really do hope the technology gets out there,” one source told us, in June 2013, “and shows everyone just how good it really is and can finally put all the fake claims to rest.”
Bruce Dell and Euclideon is pushing forward with the Holoverse concept. The Gold Coast centre opens June 4 and five more centres are in the planning stages. Three are apparently being set up in Melbourne with two more centres planned for China.
Will Euclideon finally deliver on its promises. I guess we’ll finally find out on June 4.
Comments
34 responses to “Euclideon Promised To Revolutionise Computer Graphics, Now They’re Making Holograms”
“Worry not, true believers! Just because my outrageous claims have failed to come true for the seventy-fifth time doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t buy into my seventy-sixth claim!”
That Notch. I think he might have been onto something.
We’ll see….4th of June isn’t far away.
I remember when this came out and Notch very clearly pointed out in very laymens terms exactly how it was completely bogus.
I remember so many people arguing against me on this very site about how it was real and possible to store infinite information.
They are a company who specialises in the medial imaging field.
You know their PR strategy well, it’s pretty damn effective surprisingly.
Arnold J Rimmer, your time is now!
Hey, if it ends up working, who cares about the quality of a bio.
This is CNN
They claim to open “June 4” but haven’t said which year … or century … or millennium … or even if the universe will still exist then.
They were actually reported (by the “Gold Coast Bulletin“) last year (19/12/2015) to “be open by March 31st”
https://twitter.com/beeawwb/status/733528205915611136
Linking to: https://t.co/4EnWfOAoTy
is it just the Wiimote hack that turns flat images into holographic ones by strapping the Wiimote to your head?
That’s what it’s looking like. Projector + Head tracking
The motion sickness should be high due to the false/integer parallax backgrounds. That animal animation is as bad as predicted and he still has problems with dynamic shadows..
Those Euclideon wankers again…
Man, this would’ve been amazing twenty years ago.
Here’s a piece on the ABC website about this from two weeks ago http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-05-06/brisbane-man-set-to-open-world-first-hologram-centre/7386716
These guys again?
It looks like it’s just some floor-to-ceiling rear-projected screens and standard 3D glasses? Coupled to some really janky-looking tech demos that look like a university undergrad’s VR tinkering.
Yeah. From the sounds of they haven’t made a great achievement they’ve just really, really lowered the bar on the holodeck concept.
I’d call them idiots, but someone made money off hoverboards that don’t hover, so they’ll probably make a billion dollars.
This is VR dome, not a hologram. The tech is not dissimilar to a 3D cinema with multiple projectors on all the walls. Many uni’s have one – I helped get one installed at MQ. Might be the first consumer facing unit, but the tech itself is quite old. I used a mining one more than ten years ago. The experience is OK.
*grabs popcorn*
So first the they the most amazing graphics engine that was supposed to have games use it, didnt happen, now this?
from how it looks they cannibalized the engine and made a few game demos out of it, and added vr. this isnt a hologram…
and the jab about humanity? cmon you could not sound more full of yourself. the trailer im talking about 😛
Ah, Bruce Dell. Egotist, narcissist and bullshit artist extraordinaire. Forget delusions of grandeur, Dell seems to suffer from delusions of adequacy. Once again trying to big-talk something he hasn’t made yet, and once again missed his previous promised delivery date. Hopefully the government doesn’t waste any more grant money on this jackass.
‘Delusions of adequacy’.
My new favourite phrase.
I’m genuinely amazed that that pitch sounds more full of garbage than most “Star Wars open world RPG” Kickstarters…
First of all, its clear they are using the Euclideon UD engine for this, their animation work needs a bit of smoothing out and such, not sure but one video showed a Rino charging and I could see the large jumps in frames between each movement.
Second this is actually just 3D projection technology, you can see its made up of 3 screens with the outer ones angled towards the user. The glasses are likely lcd shutters (active 3D, nothing new).
So this is a combination of a few techs, which is nice. BUT one thing that is overlooked, and that is its not really practical thus can’t compete with VR, that’s like saying a $40’000 Flight VR simulation setup is better then VR helmet, while true it is special purpose and not practical for consumers.
VR Helmets are popular idea because ANYONE with $1k or less can go out and get one setup in the room to play at any time.
And lastly, it should be mentioned that this setup here you need to face the screen to experience the 3D effect and all, maybe later versions will have a full 360degree setup, costing even more. Nice thing for the public but this isn’t a magical revolution, nor was VR helmets. A magical revolution would be having a pair of wrap around sunglasses be 4k+ VR with tracking… I’ll probably be a old man by that time.
I noticed they’ve used music from Two Steps from Hell in the video too. I wonder if they got permission to do that or if it’s just stolen.
Bruce Dell ironically puts XBox 360 and PS3 under his (vast) list of experience on LinkedIn, which is funny, as his only experience with those is his own staff telling him that the UD SDK he promised years ago was a no-go failure. I really don’t think a promise of an SDK and failed vaporware on those platforms counts as experience, particularly as his UD could not even use the standard graphics acceleration on them. He also lists a vast range of game making experience without ever having published a title.
The problems with there first technology was that it was, technically, impossible to do. There is a limit to everything, they were in fact saying they had made a perpetual motion machine, only for graphics engines. The fact is, just like in reality you cannot get more power out of something that makes less than. They were claiming they could, which was BS. The fact is, they were using point data, millions, billions of data points, that need reference, thus, the graphics may have been infinite but your hard drive is not. One level would have taken massive amounts of TB hard drive space, and would have been more difficult to program than what we have today, it is just not practical in any way. Even if you were streaming it from a cloud it still needs a place to store it, it’s just too insane, even if you wanted to use it for medical or commercial.
Now the fact they are claiming this new technology, thats better than VR…using light. I mean, I don’t know. But from there last claims, and my short explanation of what they wanted to produce last time, with little success and hundreds of people in the business claiming bullshit. I want to say they are trying to dupe people again. Also, most of the items in the video are recycled models from the video they had for the engine they claimed to make years ago. So just that alone, with them being projected onto walls makes me think they might be taking your booking money and running.
Don’t get me wrong, the engine they claimed to make can be done, but the way it has to make the 3D models is beyond insane with the data it has to stream, I don’t think a normal PC would be able to stream that much data at once.
Anyway, just my take on it. Good luck to them, but I’m going to wait and see before I fly from Melbourne to QLD to be disappointed.
It’s not just the storage, it’s the processing too. When you animate a normal 3D mesh with a polygonal surface, you only have to have the computer do the mathematical transforms for the 3 vertices connecting each polygon. If you were to try and animate a point-cloud model, you’d have to transform… infinite points 🙂
Also you can’t even move that shit. Notice how all the gargoyle models in their video are facing the same way. They can’t even rotate them on the spot!
I can see this being novel for 5 minutes, max, before it just feels like shitty 3D demos on a projector.
Better find something to do with that remaining 32 minutes then! $50, what a joke.
Am I reading this incorrectly, or does this snippet of the sentence make no grammatical sense…?
Hardware is only ever half the equation. What would the iPhone be without the endless barrage of apps making it a worthwhile experience? It would be a windows phone, Totally fine but hardly used due to a lack of content.
Make as much magic crap as you want, but you need to have a software library behind it. Even these shots don’t look to compare to the experiences on the Vive, as much as they throw forced inspiring music at mediocre looking visuals.
I punched a robot in the face in the vive, and then proceeded to spend an hour freedrawing in infiinite space to phat beats, all in the comfort of my own home. I might not have even been wearing pants. I’d have to wear pants to use this euclideon system. No sale.
If you cut out his hyperbole it’s completely feasible, just not as technologically advanced as he makes it sound. As others have said, if you project a stereoscopic image onto all walls (Either rear or front projection) then there’s your 3D world, couple it with the PS Move controllers they’re holding and wearing on their head and you have the motion tracking. Hey presto, Holo-world.
Honestly I was hoping they’d started doing some research into Google’s Holgraphic lens patent and had come up with a less bulky VR system that can be used for AR.
· Euclideon has built a large holographic entertainment centre on the gold coast called “Holoverse” (like “Universe” but for holograms)
Well thank God he cleared that up.
Secondly – BAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAAHA
*gasp*
HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA
So good to see they learned their lesson about hyperbole in announcements. “A MAJOR ACHIEVEMENT FOR HUMANITY” I just… wow.
At least it clears up the question of whether or not their UNLIMITED DETAIL tech can be animated well. The answer is no. No it can’t.