OGDEN — Ogden-area business owner Eduardo Reyes is one of the first wave of winners in the Utah Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity’s Get Started: Business Idea Challenge supporting local entrepreneurs.
Reyes’ company OgdenXR, which develops visualization tools powered by extended reality, or XR, technologies, secured non-equity funding as one of February’s awardees.
“I’m very happy that the government is doing this. This is a way to push people to make their dreams come into ideas and ideas come into businesses,” Reyes told the Standard-Examiner. “Sometimes, entrepreneurs need a little push to go to the market.”
For Reyes, the dream began in his native Chile while he was working on a project in the mining industry. His dilemma at the time: how to demonstrate, explain or allow interaction with some of the large, complex machinery being used in the mining process without having to bring people out into the desert.
“Those mining companies and mining providers, when they need to showcase these products for technical or commercial purposes, they struggle due to the cost of transportation, the insurance, etc.,” Reyes said. “Because I’m a fan of the technology, and I love virtual reality, I found a potential solution for them using a headset or mobile devices like a tablet, an iPad or an iPhone, where we can showcase this large piece of machinery without moving it. So, instead of sending people to see this machinery, we bring the machinery to the people digitally.”
Reyes moved to the U.S. just over a decade ago, and he has been in Ogden for the last three years. Over that span, he has iterated and reiterated upon his original idea, ultimately founding OgdenXR to help unlock the full potential of augmented, virtual and mixed reality tools for his clients.
Currently, that client list includes mining operations in South America and Australia. However, OgdenXR’s visualization tools have potential applications in a multitude of industries, including building design/construction.
“I have another client, Contenedores Alma; they’re in Chile, in South America, and they have a solution for modular buildings,” Reyes said. “When they went to showcase their solutions to potential clients, they were using physical models. … It’s kind of messy to bring all these small models to the client. So, I said, ‘Hey, we can digitize them. Instead of bringing all these models, you can use an iPad or VR.’”
According to Reyes, seeing these concepts in a digital space through a headset like the Meta Quest 3 saves time, is easy to comprehend and allows for instant communication if a change needs to be made to a project or build.
“When you’re showcasing a home, the client could say, ‘OK, I like this, but I would like to change this,’” Reyes said. “For example, the color of the wall or maybe the exterior of the building. ‘Okay, instead of concrete, I prefer grass,’ or whatever. You can discuss it without building it.”
As he grows his business and the tools and services it offers, Reyes is aiming for a greater level of integration of external and real-time data into the digital environment.
“Let’s say that you have a fleet of trucks, for example, or whatever you want. You’re tracking objects, vehicles, people and so on. In virtual reality, you can have a map and see all these assets, objects or people moving around. … Let’s say you’re tracking different cameras. Instead of having 20 or 30 monitors seeing different cameras, you’re wearing only one headset with all the digital cameras,” Reyes said.
“There are so many opportunities, there are so many problems that you can solve with this technology,” he said.
For more information, go to https://www.ogdenxr.com/. The Get Started Business Idea Challenge is part of GOEO’s Startup State Initiative.
