An Irvine-based software maker’s push into virtual and augmented reality is attracting a mix of new customers that includes eye doctors, engine builders, chemical plant operators and an NFL quarterback.
EON Reality Inc.’s expanding library of digital content exceeds 7,000 specific applications—one of the largest inventories anywhere—that are helping users across the globe tackle real-world problems through virtual simulations delivered online or via a smartphone and crafty cardboard cutouts.
“The phone, the headsets, the AR glasses, that’s the future,” said EON Chairman Dan Lejerskar, who co-founded the company in 1999 with fellow Swedes Mats Johansson, who serves as chief executive, and Mikael Jacobsson, who heads business development in Europe and Africa.
Early, Recent Days
EON in its early days relied on Ivy League schools and other well-funded private universities to license its learning software heavily built on simulation—Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh is still a customer—but has recently found success in the world of sports, aerospace, oil and gas, and other private sectors as technology advances and costs go down.
“In the last two years, a $1.8 million simulation has been replaced by a $10 device with your phone,” said Lejerskar, who started his career in 1985 at Volvo Aerospace as program manager for the Arianne 5 rocket program.
The pricey simulation he’s referring to is commonly used by aerospace companies such as Chicago-based Boeing Co. to understand flight variables and respond to them in real time. The $10 device is a virtual reality toolkit made by the likes of Google and Dodocase that turns cardboard into makeshift headsets to view virtual and augmented reality through a smartphone.
The innovation is helping the company bring its EON Experience VR platform and user-generated VR educational content bundled with Google Cardboard to classrooms worldwide.
The new business model, which allows teachers, trainers, and other professionals to create their own VR and AR content, is changing the way students and workers learn and comprehend new concepts, systems and far-flung experiences that, until recently, were literally worlds away.
“We feel you learn best when you have hands-on material and are engaged in the process,” Global Marketing Manager Mark Cheben said during a recent tour of EON’s 20,000-square-foot headquarters, which is outfitted with displays of all kinds, including large-scale point-of-view screens, interactive nooks, and giant holograms depicting the inner workings of the human eye, in one example.
It appears Cheben’s message is resonating with customers, which include GE, Lexus and many top collegiate athletic departments.
EON is approaching annual revenue of $100 million.
It employs about 35 in Irvine and 400 companywide in research and development hubs in Sweden and Singapore, and offices in Kansas City, Mo.; the U.K.; and Laval, France.
The company’s content have been downloaded by more than 36 million users.
Football
Tampa Bay Buccaneers rookie quarterback Jameis Winston used EON’s SIDEKIQ software that simulates defensive coverage schemes in preparation for his first NFL season.
The software, which allows users to input offensive or defensive playbooks through computer modeling, is also being utilized by University of California-Los Angeles; University of Mississippi; Syracuse University, and the University of Kansas.
Workers at ExxonMobil Research Qatar, a subsidiary of the world’s largest publicly traded oil and gas company, Exxon Mobil Corp., partnered with EON to develop a full-scale simulator of a gas processing plant in Qatar that’s been operating since 2013, providing training on more than 300 interactive control devices in six gas processing units.
EyeSim is educational software developed with Dr. Anuradha Khanna, the ophthalmology vice chairwoman at Loyola University Chicago’s Stritch School of Medicine, and her Oakbrook, Ill.-based startup, A Nu Reality.
It’s used in medical schools, providing 3-D, motion-tracked exploration of eye movement, structures and disorders in a virtual patient, as well as the effects of brain damage on vision.
EON primarily distributes its software directly; establishes regional partnerships in digital centers; and sells $100 annual online subscriptions for specific topics.
The company has developed 22 digital centers worldwide and plans to expand the concept to Mauritius, South Africa, Argentina, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan.
It recently partnered with the city of Duncanville in the Dallas area to establish a training facility to improve the region’s digital content work force with an emphasis on augmented and virtual reality. The Entrepreneurial School, which opened in May, offers a course on coding, 3-D modeling, animation, and design and development, as well as access to virtual reality equipment and development labs.
EON also is working with Oculus VR Inc. and Miami-based Next Galaxy Corp. to develop original content. Oculus, which started in Irvine and put OC on the map in the emerging VR segment in 2012 with its breakthrough prototype headset, was acquired by Facebook last year for $2.3 billion. A consumer version will launch early next year.
