Actuality Systems to Demonstrate 'Walk-Around' Prototype Volumetric 3-D Display At SID 2001.

Business/Technology Editors

READING, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 4, 2001

Breakthrough 100-Million Voxel Technology Brings 360-Degree Viewing to Computer-aided Design, Biotech, and Medical Imaging Fields

Actuality Systems, Inc., a developer of advanced 3-D display technology, will demonstrate what it believes to be one of the world's highest-performance three-dimensional displays at SID 2001, the 32nd Annual Symposium of the Society for Information Display at the San Jose Convention Center, June 5-7. The unique spherical display monitor, code-named Helios, looks more like a 20-inch-diameter globe than a traditional flat computer screen. It can show high-resolution color images that appear to hover in three-dimensional space, enabling users to move around the display and view the images from any angle across a full 360 degrees.

The breakthrough technology, which has been closely guarded since the company's founding in 1997, is believed now to provide the highest resolution volumetric imagery ever developed. The prototype display has a resolution of more than 100 million volume pixels or "voxels." Instead of flat square pixels, voxels also have depth. The resolution is defined in terms of a stack of flat slices arranged around a centerline like the sections of an apple around its core. The volumetric resolution of the Actuality prototype is therefore described as 198 slices that are each 768 pixels high x 768 pixels wide.

"The world of computer graphics has come a long way," said Actuality's founder and CTO, Gregg Favalora. "At this moment, three-dimensional images are widely used in industrial design, medicine, biotechnology, and entertainment, to name just a few. What we're doing is providing the tools to actually visualize what the computer has created in true, hovering 3-D -- and to do it in real-time and in high detail. That's a tremendous leap forward."

Unlike some 3-D displays that require special stereoscopic goggles to simulate multi-dimensional imagery, or flat-screen monitors that translate 3-D data into flat 2-D images, Actuality's technology is volumetric, meaning that it actually illuminates voxels throughout the full range of 3-D locations within the spherical display. Futhermore, a custom embedded graphics architecture takes computational load off the user's workstation, enabling fully animated 3-D imagery that can be controlled and maneuvered from the keyboard.

Actuality uses proprietary graphics-rendering algorithms to generate the extremely fast, high-performance scene drawing that is crucial for smooth animation. In addition, by using a high-speed, high-resolution projector, the display is able to create bitmapped 3-D imagery that gives users access to 100 percent of the available volume instead of just a small portion of the display as with traditional vector systems.

Since the display is based on a standard graphics library, it can be used with a range of commonly used programs for mechanical CAD, molecular visualization, and medical imaging. The company expects its display technology to have a major impact on virtually all graphics-intensive applications, particularly those that require quick comprehension of complicated information. Users might include scientists designing pharmaceuticals, who need to instantly visualize the complex structure of certain proteins and molecules; doctors working to understand the location of a tumor in order to improve surgical planning; air traffic controllers managing increasingly crowded air space; field engineers building large construction projects in order to better understand how subsystems will affect each other; automobile designers seeking to cut costs and streamline the concept and development process, and numerous others.

The firm is currently in the process of identifying beta sites in several industries.More information about Actuality's volumetric 3-D display technology is available at www.actuality-systems.com or visit them at the SID conference, booth number 1235.

About Actuality Systems

A spin-off of the prestigious MIT $50k Entrepreneurship Competition, Actuality Systems has incorporated innovations in optical, electrical, and software engineering into its technology. The firm is developing next-generation volumetric display technology with a goal of manufacturing the world's most advanced line of 3-D volumetric displays. Founded in 1997 in a Cambridge basement halfway between Harvard and MIT, the firm has received venture funding and now operates from offices in Reading, Mass., north of Boston. The company's chief technology officer, Gregg Favalora, has been named one of the top young technologists by MIT Technology Review. Company chairman, Rob Ryan, was a founder and former CEO of Ascend Communications, Inc.