Maxar and Saab believed that it was possible to build an accurate, digital version the world in 3D back in 2015, so they joined forces to launch a joint venture called Vricon. To accomplish this vision, the joint venture brought together two valuable assets to gain a unique advantage for producing 3D datasets at unprecedented scale: Maxar’s 100-petabyte satellite imagery library, the highest-resolution and most accurate commercially available, and differentiated software from Saab. Vricon’s mission to build a high-resolution 3D map of the world was off to the races, with an exciting mix of data, technology and a focused team of software engineers, data scientists and geospatial data experts.
Vricon’s business has grown as its technology and product stack have advanced over the past four years. Just recently, the U.S. Army awarded Vricon a prototype “Other Transaction” to demonstrate a transformational capability with a goal to have this deployed across many different mission use cases – including support for coalition efforts – for the One World Terrain (OWT) Program. One of the key objectives of OWT is to provide an accurate and realistic 3D, global terrain dataset to U.S. Army operators. They will use it in an immersive synthetic training environment that replicates the military’s operational environment, increasing the military’s efficiency and effectiveness.
Over the past four years, Vricon has made impressive advancements on a number of fronts:
- Production throughput has increased significantly.
- Market traction has accelerated to include defense and security, telecommunications and civil government customers.
- The Vricon team has grown, and the brand is recognized globally as a leader in 3D geospatial products.
Importantly, Vricon 3D data supports a set of disruptive offerings in the Defense market including:
- Vricon’s Precision 3D Registration (P3DR), unlocks the ability to geo-register imagery to a highly accurate foundation anywhere in the world.
- Maxar’s Visualization Systems (focused on augmented reality/virtual reality [AR/VR] applications), delivers an immersive environment for visualizing fresh Maxar imagery in a 3D representation.
- Vricon’s True Ortho imagery product, a 2D image product represents a seamless bird’s eye view of any place on the surface of the Earth, which is beneficial to mission planning and rehearsal use cases.
Maxar would like to congratulate our friends at Vricon for driving toward success in their mission to build the globe in 3D. The U.S. Army’s commitment to the company, the products and the people is impressive. This success lays an exciting foundation for greater product development, market adoption and success in the future. Congrats Vricon!