More Details on an S&T Industry Acquisition

Moving beyond technology to the business side of the S&T industry, this November 21, Vioso announced the full acquisition of domeprojection.com. Benjamin Fritsch, Vioso’s managing director and Christian Steinmann, managing director of domeprojection, met later with the author to provide additional details on the acquisition. The follow-up discussion established one business case for the two parties – that heretofore had viewed each other with increasing curiosity, interest and respect across the business playing field – to pursue this action.

The two companies are no stranger to the broad S&T market, in particular in Europe, as they have provided auto-calibration and other software, hardware and services to integrators for a wide range of projection projects.

For its part, domeprojection’s diverse customer list includes in small part, the Eurofighter and Tornado installations on behalf of Zeiss. Another customer, DFS Deutsche Flugsicherung GmbH (German Air Navigation Services), is responsible for air traffic control in Germany. At its’ headquarter in Langen near Airport Frankfurt/Main, DFS operates a tower simulator for simulation and training purposes.

During Vioso’s 20-year journey, the company has focused initially more on the broader AV world according to Fritsch, but gained a strong market share in the field of simulation in the last five years. The parent firm’s approximate 1,600 projects have supported dome projection installations, and other displays in motor sports and other high-risk training enterprises including flight training.

As requirements for training systems became more rigorous and complex, the two leaders saw the need “for acquisition so they could work together.” The Vioso executive continued, “the more demanding the installation becomes, the more technology is needed. domeprojection has outstanding technology, especially in military simulation. And that means integrating into IGs, having the right connections for collimated screens for normal tasks, and other requirements.”

Beyond the two companies’ complementary and synergistic technology portfolios are their compatible engineering workforces. Steinmann interestingly added, “This was the important part.”domeprojection will continue to operate under the leadership of Christian Steinmann, current managing director (left). Benjamin Fritsch, is Vioso's managing director (right). Source: Vioso

Fritsch also called attention to their evolving sector, noting while their products and services support projects such as multi-projection systems and other projection displays, “lately this is including more direct-view LED, and we provide LED display optical correction and perspective corrections for LED warp as well. And as you are aware this market is moving to more LED-based systems and there are some exciting developments like real-time dynamic eyepoint color correction.” For emphasis Steinmann added in the future, it will be possible to calculate a color eye point correction in real time with ProjectionTools. “We are currently working on this, patent pending.”

The Vioso leader also provided a key insight on his company’s interest to support the emerging XR (AR/VR/MR) market. Noting that in the proAV section, “XR refers to virtual studios – it means certain camera perspectives for shooting movies. XR in the military may refer to HoloLens displays. All of these mixed reality words have one thing in common – it’s about merging the real world with digital content. It’s a consistent experience – you match these worlds in the most proper way possible. You need to match products, shadows, output, virtual elements, and surreal projection displays.”

Peering into 2024, Vioso will “expand its portfolio, for sure,” Fitsch declared. In one of several instances, Vioso6 and projection tools, the most current automatic warping and blending (auto alignment) technology software, and other tools and products will be further extended to support new kinds of displays like special LED shapes. “We’ll also introduce new hardware platforms for integration, including a range of servers and a warp box,” the corporate managing director added. Beyond technology, the evolution of S&T into a global business has not been lost on Vioso. “We need to be more present in certain parts and this is true of the US market. We’ll open a branch in the US dedicated to simulation soon. This is very important to be close to the customer.”