Actuality Systems Successfully Completes $6.2 Million Round of Seed Funding; New Investors Include Leading Japanese Optical Materials Company.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

BURLINGTON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 9, 2003

Actuality Systems, Inc., the world leader in spatial 3D visualization technology, announced that it has successfully completed its seed-funding round with participation from Hoya Corporation of Tokyo, Navigator Technology Ventures of Cambridge, and a group of private investors. The total value of the round was $6.2 million.

The participation of Hoya Corporation, one of Japan's leading producers of optical products, represents a new strategic investment, channel sales, and technology partnership between Actuality and Hoya.

NTV, an affiliate of Draper Laboratory of Cambridge, Mass., and led by Alain Hanover and Rana K. Gupta, is an early-stage, technology venture capital firm that seeks to fund technology-rich start-ups. With the assistance of Draper Laboratory, NTV invests in unique, highly proprietary technologies. NTV's other portfolio companies are Sionex Corp., Polychromix, Inc., Sand Video, Inc., and PLEJ, Inc.

"Actuality is expanding the 3D visualization market with Perspecta technologies," said Alain Hanover, managing director and CEO at Navigator. "The 3D images created by CT, MRI, LIDAR, seismic, and other modalities have been crippled by existing 2D display technology. The Perspecta 3D System renders true 360 degrees viewing of full color high fidelity images. Thus, for the first time, optimizing the value of these images. Perspecta gives users a whole new toolset to comprehend, interact, animate and magnify these important images. It's quite extraordinary."

Actuality Systems, Inc. develops, produces, sells, and licenses the Perspecta(TM) 3D System. The complete system consists of the Perspecta spatial display, which projects 3D imagery inside a 20-in transparent dome, and the Perspecta software environment.

First Customer Ship After Only $3.25 million Seen as Major Achievement

"Closing our seed round of investments marks an important milestone for Actuality," said Cameron Lewis, the company's president and CEO. "With outstanding support and encouragement from our leading investors, it took us less than 33 months and only $3.25million of invested capital to develop (file 18 patents) and build our initial production run and deliver complete Perspecta systems to our first 10 commercial customers. Other firms have failed to reach these metrics even spending 10 or 20 times as much invested capital. Now, we're ready to focus on application development to rapidly expand our customer base in key growth markets."

Typical applications for Perspecta include: real-time interventional medical guidance (such as biopsy or catheter localization), surgical planning, workgroup collaboration, registration, and visualization of CT, MRI, 3D ultrasound, and PET scans; battlespace visualization; air-traffic control; 3D games; and homeland security (visualizing the contents of freight or air passenger luggage).

In addition to Hoya and Navigator, other major investors in the company include: Rob Ryan, who founded Ascend Communications, Bob Gelfond, founder and CEO of MagiQ Technologies and angel investor in Amazon.com; and individuals associated with Smedvig Capital of London (UK).

About Actuality Systems

Actuality Systems, Inc. develops, sells, and licenses the Perspecta(TM) 3D System for spatial visualization, simulation, and workgroup collaboration. Perspecta enables users to create high-resolution spatial 3D images that can be viewed from any angle around a 360-degree dome - without the use of special goggles. The company recently announced several new patents protecting the unique Perspecta 3D technology. For additional information about Actuality Systems, please call 781-229-7812 or visit http://www.actuality-systems.com.