The stand featured a gallery of vertically-mounted digitial printed holograms by our partners View Holographics as well as a few horizontal floor-mounted digital holograms by Zebra Imaging. The interactive holographic display was also on show, together with a couple of apps for people to try out. Popular apps included the simple counter, Deathstar, drawing in mid-air and the meter.

Jason Bradbury from the TV show made a brief appearance on our stand on 5th April. He did a great job of describing our 3D holograms and holographic display on The Gadget Show TV programme broadcast on 25th March 2013. This broadcast had an audience of over a million viewers.

The Live Event had an attendance of over 60,000 people. Our stand was amongst the most popular – many people who had seen the broadcast specifically came over to our stand to check out the tech for themselves. We estimate that somewhere between 12-15,000 people came by to see our technology.

Holoxica founder, Javid Khan, was invited to present the holograms at The HUB Theatre with an interactive Q&A session hosted by Lucy Hedges from Stuff Magazine & Stuff.TV. We revealed a full-length 1.7m human anatomy hologram and talked about the current interactive holographic display as well as the future of holographic 3D displays.

Here are some pictures of our stand.

Press presentations on Holoxica's stand at The Gadget Show Live 2013

Video from CNET UK

CNET UK reporter Luke Westaway says Holoxica has “easily the most mind-blowing technology in the show”

Your feedback

If you were there and liked what you saw, then please leave us a comment below. If you have any ideas for holograms, then we’d also like to hear from you. Finally, if you have any ideas for apps for our holographic display then drop us a line below.

The interactive holographic display system comprises a Holographic Optical Element (HOE) lens, a digital controller, a motion sensor and a projection subsystem (a laser projector) imaging a diffusion screen. The HOE is about the size of a page (20x30cm) and the images are formed in real space (in mid-air) about 20cm from the hologram plane. The image are about the size of a hand (up to 7x7cm). The images can be refreshed at video rates and arbitrary images can be displayed. However, the images are formed in three distinct planes, corresponding to the colours of the lasers in the laser projector i.e. red, green and blue.

The display includes a Kinect motion sensor to enable interactivity with a number of apps that we have written for it. The viewer can ‘touch’ icons in space and do things like draw in mid-air. We have about ten apps at the moment including mid-air drawing, pong-style game, counter, keypad, viewing image sequences .. etc.

Immediate applications of this technology include HUD-style displays and novel user-interfaces with the added dimensions of real-space interactivity.

This display is an improvement over our first generation demo, which had a fixed number of images embedded in the holographic screen. The holographic images could be replayed in real space (mid-air) in real-time, in any sequence. However, this display was not able to display arbitrary images and there were some limits to its scalability.

This display is featured on The Gadget Show, FutureTech Edition, broadcast on 25th Mar 2013 (Channel 5, UK). The show has over a million viewers.

The holographic video display was also presented at The Gadget Show Live! Event between 2-7th Apr 2013 at the NEC in Birmingham. Our stand was very popular, with thousands of people dropping by to see our holographic technology in action.

More news and info

The Gadget Show Blog article with video
Holoxica at The Gadget Show Live Event at the NEC, Birmingham: 2-7 April 2013
TechRadar article Touch the future as interactive 3D holograms become reality
Optics.org article Interactive Holographic Video Display Developed
TechRadar article 3D holograms in your Honda: Hovering HUDs will help you drive
3D Focus article Interactive 3D holographic apps written for new display

Our Value-Added Reseller agreement primarily covers the UK, although we can handle orders within the European Union. We feel that we can leverage our expertise in high-end 3D holographic  design and take it to the next level. We are using Zebra technology for our latest designs in medicine and industrial design. Holoxica is proud to be part of this ecosystem and we look forward to achieving some truly stunning digital holograms.

ETDE commissioned Holoxica to produce a 60x85cm (A1 size) horizontally mounted hologram with four different views of this state of the art biofuel laboratory facility.

The first, front, view shows the whole building with the roof on; as you walk anti-clockwise, the second, side view strips away the roof and reveals the interior with labels for the main pieces of equipment. The rear view drops the labels and rear wall (see image below) to reveal further details and the same is true of the remaining side view.

This design will be featured on The Gadget Show, broadcast on 25th March 2013 on Channel 5, a national UK broadcaster.

Holoxica created the hologram from a synthetic 3D model of a female. The hologram contains three layers of information on the muscle structures, skeleton complete with arteries plus nervous system; and the internal organs. One of the challenges facing medical learning is teaching the 3D structure of the body since their books are in 2D and so are the apps that they might get on tablets. The hologram is a full 3D image that conveys the necessary information to aid understanding of the different aspects of the human body. There is no other way to show this information.

This is certainly our most difficult and challenging design to date. The level of detail is extraordinary. Prof Findlater says: “This hologram has exceeded my expectations in terms of quality and clarity”.

The hologram will be placed in the Anatomy Museum at the Old Medical School at Edinburgh University. It will be used by the anatomy staff to teach medical students. The museum is open to the public on the last Saturday of each month.

Second generation interactive holographic display

Full-length human anatomy hologram

Revealing the secrets of the Rhind Mummy

First generation holographic display

Holoxica at Photonics West 2012, San Francisco. Interview with Javid Khan

After winning the Edinburgh Science Triangle Collaboration Award.

First hologram of a Green Fluorescent Protein

The award recognises the potential of holographic 3D technology in museums and galleries. Holoxica’s digital holograms are presented at venues such as the MIT Museum, Edinburgh University Museum of Anatomy and the Orkney Museum. Holograms can be used to depict artefacts that can be shown in full colour 3D that engage and wow audiences. Notable recent works include the Rhind Mummy and the Royal Oak Shipwreck. The latest technology can lie flat and you can walk 360 degrees around the hologram.

The award was presented to Holoxica’s Founder, Javid Khan, at a reception held in the recently renovated National Museum of Scotland. He said: “Of course, we’re surprised and thrilled to win this award. There are many excellent products and services offered in this exhibition. I don’t know if we have the best product but we certainly have some exciting new technology for museums.”

David (left) and Javid with the Best Product Award at the Holoxica Stand.

Holoxica’s digital holographic technology can be used to communicate intricate concepts or exhibits to the public in a natural an intuitive way. The holograms are cost-effective and Holoxica can work with almost any concept. The applications are endless and limited only by the imagination. For example, our technology can reconstruct ancient ruins as viewers move past the hologram. We can also record valuable artefacts such that they are almost indistinguishable from the orginal.

We already have a track record of presenting scientific holograms in various museums around the UK and US. The award is a confirmation of our feeling that our holographic technology has a broader appeal beyond our core scientific applications.

If you have already viewed our Kickstarter campaign, please take 3 minutes to complete our 10 question survey:

This campaign was a challenge and we would like to thank everyone who helped us through it. First, we would like to thank our backers for your generous support. Please check our Facebook page to see your name on our donor wall .

We would also like to thank everyone who filled out the questionnaire. We learned a lot about our product’s position in the consumer market and the market’s readiness for such cutting edge technology. We are utilizing the insights gained through the survey to make our product and message clearer and better suited the wants and needs of our professional customers in scientific and technical imaging.

Thank all of you for your support. You can keep up-to-date with our progress and maintain your position in the early adoptive phase of our growth by following us on twitter, facebook and LinkedIn.

ADUS UK Ltd was commissioned to provide sonar images of the Royal Oak shipwreck by the Salvage & Marine Operations unit, of the UK Ministry of Defense, in 2006. The Royal Oak, a Revenge-class battleship of the British Royal Navy, was the first battleship sunk in the Second World War. She was torpedoed by a German U-47 submarine on October 14, 1939, and lost 833 of her crew. Her sinking was particularly tragic as she was anchored in a port with strong natural and artificial defenses and was carrying over 100 Boy Seamen, each under eighteen years old. She sank very quickly, within thirty-one minutes of the initial torpedo strike, which severely hampered any rescue efforts.

ADUS UK Ltd specializes in underwater archaeology and multibeam sonar imaging. Holoxica utilized a 3D model of the wreck and seafloor, which was generated with ADUS’ multi-beam system and visualized by Chris Rowland at the School of Media Arts and Imaging, University of Dundee. Instead of the traditional side scan sonar, which allows for 2 dimensional visualization, ADUS utilizes multibeam sonar scanning systems which provide depth data of the seabed. This additional dimension allows for the creation of three dimensional digital terrain models (DTM’s).

Holoxica faced unique challenges in this project, as it is the first company to use sonar scans to create a 3D digital hologram. The scan contains over 1.1 million points in three-dimensional space. After initially attempting to join up the dots to generate surfaces, it became apparent that the more accurate way to utilize the information would be to use the data as presented and augment it with some simple scaling and processing operations to ensure the integrity of the picture. Some tricky manual features were also included to provide for occlusion in an effort to prevent the viewer seeing through the points to the other sides.

HMS Royal Oak from Holoxica on Vimeo.

Through coupling the extreme accuracy of the scanning technology with pioneering 3D rendering, Holoxica has produced a hologram that is a true representation of the current state of the HMS Royal Oak, accurate to within c.10cm. Building on military visualisation technology, Holoxica created this hologram as a ‘lie-flat’ image. ‘Lie flat’ holograms are laid horizontally and illuminated by a single spot light directly from above. Thus, it is possible to rotate the HMS Royal Oak or walk 360 degrees around it. This expansion in Holoxica’s technology will create immediate benefit for all of its customers. Through this project, Holoxica has gained the ability to offer a new format to customers in medicine and architecture who often have a need for lie-flat images.