As developers attempt to keep up with the pace of innovation and satisfy the escalating demand for applications that delight and deliver value to end-users, the time may be right for this community to take a look at the new wave of holographic solutions entering the market. 3-D volumetric capabilities — that can reside on a smartphone or tablet — allow developers to create a whole new family of solutions for both businesses and consumers that can be monetized as profitable recurring services that transform user experiences today and well into the future.
Today’s holographic capabilities are profound, robust, and effective, and as developers will happily learn, a far cry from the earlier iterations that teased the market.
Constant Innovation
Holography was considered an enigma for generations, with 3-D projections typically confined to stage shows in darkened theatres. These choreographed events centered around manufactured experiences such as concerts featuring departed musical legends, which required months to complete and hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce. While these shows’ popularity waned, they demonstrated that holography could appeal to a mass audience.
With the advent of AR/VR/XR innovations, holography took a major leap forward over the last five years. The technology matured to the point that interactions could successfully scale from arenas and theatres down to the individual level. However, the quality and comfort of the AR/VR/XR-generated holographic experience proved to be problematic for many. Instead of showcasing holographs in a theatre-style production, the trend shifted into a personal interaction where participants are required to wear cumbersome headgear or goggles, which many people find disorienting, distracting, and unnatural. What’s more, these devices are quite expensive, which greatly limits addressable markets. Even with these shortcomings, the emergence of the AR/VR/XR model illustrates that holography can appeal to both consumer and business markets. The trick is to find a mechanism that allows developers to cost-efficiently create broad holographic applications and services that are aligned with user expectations and to identify a delivery mechanism that is simple, dependable, and priced appropriately.
Game-Changing Technology
New holographic innovations have entered the market that offers developers a unique and compelling path to create volumetric services that can satisfy the thirst for these capabilities. The problems that have persisted in the past—such as the need for large, darkened theatres or expensive and clunky headgear—are no more. Some of the more robust tools are a developer’s dream: simple to access, easy to code with, and offering the ability to produce margin-rich solutions that are perfectly suited for both consumer and business applications. For developers proficient in Unity, the road to revenue becomes even more direct. This well-respected platform includes robust libraries for volumetric imagery that gives developers opportunities to seamlessly add volumetric content into their offerings through intuitive drop-and-drag functionalities, expanding the capacity to address market wishes while accelerating time-to-money.
In addition, developers can add holography into a range of applications across multiple markets, delivering significant value to enterprises. Any organization that relies on any sort of visual imagery, such as defense, health care, education, oil and gas, retail, or entertainment, can instantly improve productivity and efficiency through 3-D visualization. Even better, since the new generation of holographic capabilities can be accessed through smartphones and tablets, the costs associated with utilizing holographic applications becomes much more appealing to businesses.
Certainly, this benefits consumers as well. Applications such as gaming are obvious targets for developers, but other applications, such as maps, social media, and even video conferencing, become much richer and more stimulating engagements through holography.
Conclusion
Innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurism are core to the DNA of developers. As both enterprise and consumer expectations evolve, and the thirst for new experiences and tools continues to escalate, developers, content creators, and ISVs will be hard-pressed to produce entire new solution suites that meet this demand. Leveraging advanced holographic capabilities through accessible SDKs and delivered on consumer devices give the developer community a boundless opportunity to offer volumetric solutions that will delight both businesses and consumers. These features can breathe life into existing off-the-shelf applications and provide a foundation for exciting new capabilities. Even better, holography can open the doors to an untapped revenue stream that can be monetized many times over.
