PoCo tech company Finger Food creates giant Cirque du Soleil hologram

Virtual reality has stolen technology headlines, with much ink being spilled on how far the hardware has developed from the earliest iterations of Google Cardboard. HTC Vive, Playstation VR, and Oculus Rift have all hit the market in the past year alongside a slew of smartphone-housing headsets—and, given its swift adoption by everything from video games to porn, you can bank on VR remaining on the front pages.

While virtual reality might have been the first to reach consumers, however, its sister technologies of augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR) are set to make the biggest impact on the way we experience our surroundings. Completely filling a field of vision with digital images, VR takes users out of the real world, while AR and MR keep individuals in it.

Of that pair, MR is emerging as a more powerful tool. More complex than its AR counterpart—a technology that can only extend the environment by creating digital graphics that appear and disappear depending on whether the user chooses to look at it—MR’s computer images map onto the real world, allowing multiple individuals to view the same thing. Wearing an MR headset, you can still see your surroundings and walk around, but the space is filled with digital creations so tangible that they defy belief. Dubbed holograms, these images are three-dimensional, locked in a particular location, and able to be examined from any angle. Put simply—they’re as real as you can get.

Microsoft’s HoloLens, the first MR headset made available to developers, has quickly been adopted by those in the business solutions space—something that Port Coquitlam tech company Finger Food has been swift to realize. Finding its niche by designing innovative tools for global companies, the startup has already worked with high profile names to transform truck design by manipulating holograms, and has now secured a new partner in the world-famous Cirque du Soleil.

Creating an interactive scenographic tool from scratch for the HoloLens, Finger Food has enabled the circus company to build full-scale holographic sets that can even incorporate digital projections of the performers. The tech enables the creation of alterable 3D blocks and shapes that can be quickly transformed into a full rendering of a stage, including textures and materials. Those shapes, in turn, can be manipulated in real-time by a number of people.

“Finger Food is excited to work with fellow innovators, Cirque du Soleil, to explore the applications of mixed reality for their creative process,” Finger Food CEO, Ryan Peterson, says. “We are immensely proud of the creativity, dedication, and talent of our developers and designers who created this exciting demo in collaboration with Microsoft in just three weeks.”

Executives from Cirque du Soleil unveiled the new tool at the Microsoft Built conference, and discussed how it saves them both time and money by visualizing their designs in three dimensions.

“Constantly looking for ways to revolutionize the world of live entertainment and becoming its global leader, Cirque du Soleil explores the impact of the implementation of mixed reality in its creative process,” says Bernard Fouché, General Manager of Innovation, at Cirque du Soleil’s C:Lab. “In collaboration with Microsoft and Finger Food, we’re testing the power of the HoloLens technology, used for the first time in the context of show creation.”

With more companies realizing the potential of working with MR holograms by the day, you can bet that VR will soon be sharing some of its column inches.

Follow Kate Wilson on Twitter @KateWilsonSays