A NEW DIMENSION; ENGINEER PUTS COLD WAR CREDENTIALS TO GOOD USE IN VIRTUAL REALITY VENTURE.

Byline: Ben Sullivan Daily News Staff Writer

Charles Palm earned his technical wings helping the U.S. Navy track Russian submarines, measuring the distance between the Earth and moon for NASA and giving Sharp Electronics its first desktop color copier.

Now the 51-year-old engineer is putting his scientific brawn behind a technology called RVR, or rapid virtual reality. As co-founder of Westlake Village-based Synthonics Technologies Inc., Palm hopes RVR will make 3-D graphics available to the masses and, not incidentally, make him and his colleagues rich.

If the technology catches on, that's a distinct possibility. RVR could find its way into applications ranging from desktop publishing software to catheter-based medical lasers.

But it's been a rough road to wealth so far. Synthonics shares have dropped 57 percent this year, going from $1.75 in January to 75 cents at the close of trading Friday. And after four years of existence, the company is only recording its first substantial revenues, of about $500,000, this quarter.

``We'd hoped for better,'' Palm said of the company's recent share price performance.

Arguably more telling than the last year, however, will be the next six months, as projects involving several of the company's half-dozen subsidiaries begin to bear fruit.

At the heart of RVR are patented algorithms Palm developed that allow images taken from scanned photographs to be ``wrapped'' around a digital wire framework. Together the frame and image ``skin'' form a fully-rotatable, dimensionally correct, 3-D rendering of the photographed object. The more photos scanned in from various angles, the more accurate the resulting graphic.

With traditional 3-D rendering software, ``There's an accuracy-cost trade-off,'' Palm said. The more accurate the software, the more expensive such programs are to own and operate.

Synthonics software, at only a few hundred dollars per license (the price varies depending on application) promises to make 3-D renderings comparable to those generated by expensive engineering software, but at a fraction of the cost.

John Peterson, an engineering manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said that beyond price, a benefit of the Synthonics' approach is the limited computing power needed to run the software.

Peterson is part of a team of JPL scientists laying groundwork for a future Mars mission that would launch dozens of small transmitter robots to the Red Planet's surface. Once on Mars, the robots would send back images and data that scientists could compile on Earth to create a virtual reality Mars environment.

That the Synthonics software can run on a Pentium PC, as opposed to, say, a bulky and expensive Silicon Graphics workstation, would allow scanning and processing of images to take place in computers on board a Mars lander. The lander could then transmit compact, nearly finished 3-D image files back to Earth, saving battery power through shortened transmission times.

``The breakthrough here is that it's highly automated and allows me to quickly build the models in an easier way,'' Peterson said.

Peterson has commissioned Synthonics to begin a 3-D digital rendering of the sand and rock ``stage'' that the facility uses to mimic the Mars environment for testing new rovers.

Also impressed by Synthonics technology is the Smithsonian Institution, which last month hired the company and its subsidiary Christopher Raphael Inc. to develop an interactive CD-ROM sampler of the museum's artifacts.

With the CD, users can, for example, look at, manipulate and even dismantle an original cotton gin that has been digitized using Synthonics software. If it proves a hit with consumers, the museum will commission more discs focusing on specific parts of the Smithsonian collection.

Museum spokesman Mike Carrigan said the software will let the Smithsonian and other museums ``dramatically increase access to and interaction with all the artifacts included in its collections.''

Though less sexy than either the JPL or Smithsonian jobs, the field likely to make Synthonics the most near-term money is orthodontics. Synthonics subsidiary Acuscape has developed a product that lets dentists input patients' dental X-rays, quickly render a 3-D model of the mouth, and then manipulate the teeth and bones to show patients what they would look like after particular procedures. A final version is expected to be shipped in the first quarter of 1998.

Between Christopher Raphael, Acuscape and licensing rights expected from software makers who want to bundle the Synthonics technology with their own programs, CEO Mike Budd expects the company to have 1998 revenues of between $5 million and $10 million. Plans for a 3-D photocopying machine targeted to debut in 1999 could add significantly to future revenues, he said.

``There's all kinds of possibilities,'' for this software, Palm said. ``We're only starting.''

GOING 3-D

WHO: Synthonics Technologies Inc.

WHERE: Westlake Village

FOUNDED: 1993

EMPLOYEES: Nine

MARKET/TICKER SYMBOL: OTC:SNNT

REVENUE (1996): $208,224

CORE BUSINESS: Developing applications based on ``rapid virtual reality'' technology

WEB SITE: www.synthonics.com

CAPTION(S):

Photo, Box

Photo: (Color) Michael Budd, left, president and CEO of Synthonics, and Charles Palm, the chief technology officer, display a page from one of their CD-ROMs.

Bob Halvorsen/Daily News

Box: (Color) GOING 3-D (See Text)