Cisco Webex Hologram

2021: Cisco Launches Platform for Employee Holograms During Videoconferencing

On October 26, 2021, Cisco introduced Webex Hologram, a service that will bring augmented reality to its collaboration platform. Webex Hologram, used with AR headsets such as Magic Leap and Microsoft HoloLens, promises to create photorealistic holograms of real people in real time.

Cisco has significantly replenished the Webex portfolio over the past year, the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the need for virtual collaboration tools. Webex is one of the giants in the crowded collaboration market, competitors such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet have helped this area develop rapidly.

Cisco Introduces Platform for Employee Holograms During Videoconferencing

Cisco states that using holograms makes the interaction process more engaging and realistic.

ZDNet is a technology developed by Cisco to create photorealistic holograms:

• Cloud rendering technology allows you to partially visualize the light field through cloud servers and then adjust the rendering performed in the headset. This allows you to constantly update the scene on the headset, eliminating pumping and other AR-related ailments. This method optimizes processing power by allocating most of the computing to cloud servers, thus circumventing the computing limitations of the headset, thus using the power of cloud servers to ensure excellent performance. The innovation in rendering allows Webex Hologram to work efficiently on the modern Internet, including LTE.

• Innovations that allow easy capture of light fields, as well as compression and transmission of information over the Internet. Cisco compression methods allow you to load data into the cloud and transfer it from the cloud to the headset, all within the normal range of broadband connectivity.

• Although the light fields themselves are not a novel invention, they have advantages over surround video. For example, the light fields may represent the actual specified scene point in different colors when viewed at different angles. Volumetric video, on the contrary, usually limits the representation to the same color. With Webex Hologram, this difference allows light fields to better display shining and reflecting objects.

Webex Hologram is available to a limited number of customers as part of beta testing by the end of October 2021. Currently, Cisco is focused on identifying use cases and applications with clients within the program, as well as on accounting for feedback. From there, they plan to expand the beta version of the program.^[1]

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