Could holograms be about to replace video calls? Well, we may be a few years off this Star Trek-esque technology becoming mainstream but a recent Swiss watch CEO utilised this emerging tech to attend a conference in China recently – and tech pundits are saying holograms are going to be the next big thing.
Discussing the flight restrictions put in place by Covid 19, David Nussbaum, the boss of US holograms firm Portl said they were able to send a life size hologram of Swiss watchmaker, Christoph Grainger-Herr, to Shanghai instead.
“We beamed him from his office in Schaffhausen, Switzerland, to the event in Shanghai. He did his thing, chatted to other executives, and even unveiled a new watch, all in real time. And then we beamed him out again!” Nussbaum revealed.
The company refers to its holographic calls as “telepresence or even holoportation” as a real-life replica of them (after appearing in a white cube) appears in a 4K resolution for HD graphics with a speaker and microphone to make it feel more natural. Apparently after the Zoom calls of lockdown people are not happy with a 2D conversation and need to move on to the next level.
It doesn’t come cheap however. The starting price to install Portl’s technology starts at $60,000. So far, the US-based company counts T-Mobile and Netflix among their customers but believes it will be mainstream within the next 5 years.
Competition comes from Microsoft and Google who are ramping up their augmented holographic experiences. Meta (formerly Facebook) recently launched its social VR app Horizon Worlds which allows 3D avatars to interact in a shared virtual space.
