SAN ANTONIO, Tex. - July 22, 2002 - Actuality Systems, Inc., a pioneer in the development of spatial 3D visualization technology, said today that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has notified the company it will allow Actuality's patent application for a "diffraction-based optical crossbar switch." The switch has applications in optical networking, holographic video, and optical computation. The announcement was made during SIGGRAPH 2002, the 29th Annual International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques being held here this week.

The unique switch enables engineers to rapidly steer multiple beams of light by combining standard off-the-shelf projector chips with a single custom optical component known as a diffractive optic. The switch was invented by Actuality founder Gregg Favalora and Rick Dorval, the company's chief operating officer. Unlike typical optical crossbar switches, in which the angles of many microscopic reflectors must be controlled to tight tolerances, Actuality's invention allows standard high-speed reflective microdisplay components - which excel at fast switching - to rely on a stationary beam-steering component to guide light from one place to another.

"Every new patent is an important milestone for a young company like ours," said Cameron Lewis, Actuality president and CEO. "Gregg heads an extraordinary team of engineers that are redefining the field of 3D spatial visualization. This technology will help Actuality bring advanced visualization tools to a range of applications."

The technology was invented during the development of advanced three-dimensional displays. "Since spatial 3D displays can be thought of as complex beam-steering systems, we realized that the diffraction-based beam-steering device could be applied broadly," said Gregg Favalora, CTO. "For example, optical networking and optical computation require directing beams of light from one place to another at extraordinary rates. This invention is a flexible alternative to get data to its destination."

Actuality Systems' core product is the Perspecta platform, which consists of a unique 360-degree spatial display and the associated Perspecta software and SDK. The platform enables users to render high-resolution spatial images that can be viewed from any angle as the user moves around the display. The display itself illuminates a record 100 million volume pixels, or "voxels," within a transparent sphere.

Typical applications for the Perspecta platform include: drug discovery, such as visualization of protein structures; surgical planning and radiation treatment planning, for doctors working to understand the exact location of a tumor on a CAT scan or mammogram; air-traffic control; game development; security specialists seeking a faster and more reliable way to visualize the contents of freight or passenger luggage, and numerous other possibilities.

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About Actuality Systems
Actuality Systems, Inc. develops, produces, sells, and licenses the Perspecta spatial 3D platform, a combination of hardware and software that permits 360-degree visualization, simulation, and collaboration. Founded in 1997 in Cambridge, the firm has received venture funding and now operates from offices in Burlington, Mass., north of Boston. Actuality's President and CEO is Cameron Lewis, who, in addition to executive roles at Netscape and PatientKeeper, developed the first anti-virus ASP service at McAfee.com, and headed up more than $400 million in mergers and acquisitions at MedicaLogic. 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., which was acquired by Lucent in a deal valued at more than $24 billion.

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