He is none other than Josua Hönger, a lifelong 3D coder and entrepreneur. As a part of our ongoing series of Holoflow Tech Interviews, we are incredibly grateful to have had the chance to interview him. Co-founder of Mindcraft AG, answered our questions in the most engaging and insightful way, sharing interesting personal and career-wise facts alongside his experienced views on modern technology and the metaverse. We strongly recommend you not miss out on this interview!

I am Josua, 45 years old, married, and the father of four kids. I have a
lifelong passion for coding real-time graphics. At the age of 23,
founded my first company, and ever since then I have been working on turning my
passion into a business. While still being a software developer at heart,
These days, I enjoy “developing people” more than “developing
software”.

Josua Hönger

1. When did you first realize you wanted to become a programmer?

I guess it was around the age of 12. I bought a programmable calculator (with a simple 1-line display), and I coded little games. For example, I coded a horse race game where each horse was represented by some character on the display. My teacher at school was rather surprised. And one of my classmates was so jealous that the device was soon stolen. Around the age of 14, I was lucky that we had an AMIGA 500 at home, so I started programming games. My passion for coding was endless; I knew that I wanted to do just that for the rest of my life. Everything else (except composing music) was just boring in comparison. I was much more excited about controlling the color of each pixel on the screen myself than playing games made by others.

2. How long have you been doing this?

Around the age of 16, in 1993, I got really passionate about programming. A friend at school introduced me to the “Demoscene”—an underground hacker scene of extreme graphics (and sound) programming. I was so blown away by what he showed me, I wanted to compete in that scene.

I switched from AMIGA to Intel-based chipsets and spent most of my time learning Pascal, C++, and Assembler—the only way to code visual effects in real-time in the 1990s was a hand-coded assembler.

3. What were your career high points prior to co-founding Mindcraft AG?

First, I have to mention that my passion for coding resulted in a real conflict with my academic career. After gymnasium, I started my studies at the ETH in Zurich, but actually, I had only one thing in mind: to code visual effects day and night. After 1 year of studies, instead of studying for our first 1-year exams, my best friend from gymnasium and I coded our first demo for the demoscene and ranked first. The organizers of the event then immediately offered us a job, which served as the perfect excuse to quit the ETH.

About a year later, in early 2000, I founded my first company, “Visualight AG” (together with 4 others), and we coded an editor for visual real-time effects, auto-synced to music. It was downloaded all over the world, and hacked to bypass the payment fees all the time! =)

Soon I was facing the harsh reality of being an entrepreneur more than being a coder. Organizing money to survive as a company was utterly hard, and one partner after the other was leaving the sinking ship, while I was determined to stay. Fortunately, luck is with the diligent. I managed to join forces with an unknown two-man company in London called ‘Green Hippo‘.

Together with them, the idea of the ‘Hippotizer’ was born, a media server that would later disrupt the entire show business! It took about another 7 years—and those were really painful years, financially speaking until Hippotizer had its breakthrough and became a worldwide success. Since then, it has been used in countless multimedia shows around the world on a daily basis.

Since 2007, Hippotizer has been used in most Eurovision Song Contest multimedia setups. Some examples include:

Besides being a remarkable part of ESC for many years, in 2010, Hippotizer was used to create one of the world’s first really huge 3D projection mappings.

And in 2011, Hippotizer was used in Beyonce’s performance “Run the World Girls”:

4. How did Mindcraft AG begin? Tell us the story.

In 2012, I was contacted by Gur, an old Hippotizer contact from Israel who was on a business trip to Switzerland. He wanted to finally meet the “father of the Hippotizer”. So we met in Zurich and talked about Torah and technology, and finally, he introduced me to the 3D-sensing technology of his company, ‘Mantis Vision‘.

He considered cooperation, and in 2013 I dropped everything else in order to start prototyping with the Mantis Vision 3D capturing technology together with Robert Petka and Kostas Pataridis. About a year into this cooperation, Addie Reiss, Christian Loos, and Alexey Lunev also joined. Our vision and dream were to capture volumetric visual content instead of traditional 2D videos and to revolutionize the technology of filmmaking in a similar way as when it transitioned from black-white to color. In 2016, we celebrated a great success at Siggraph 2016. However, the internal structures at Mantis Vision blocked me from growing to my full potential as a coder and entrepreneur, leading to the founding of Mindcraft GmbH (later transformed into an AG) in late 2018. Chris was a co-founder of Mindcraft, and Alexey also joined us from the first hour.

5. What does your company do?

We love writing clean code 😀 ,without hacks, ugly compromises, and internal fights! We develop outstanding 3D solutions. But most importantly, we enable people (employees, subcontractors, and clients) who put their trust in us to grow to their full potential. When Chris and I founded Mindcraft, we were thinking very deeply about how to attract and keep talent as a small startup. Establishing and living with clear values like honesty, reliability, transparency, etc. are the basis of our success. People who compromise on any of those values even just once have no place at Mindcraft. We reward those who work hard and stay loyal during the hardest of times.

6. What are some of Mindcraft AG’s projects you’re most proud of?

Frankly, I can’t tell you because it’s confidential. But I am proud that we, as a small company, are contributing to some real core-technology that will shape the metaverse of the not-too-distant future.

7. As an expert in the field of technology, how do you perceive the current state of modern media technology?

Things are changing really fast, so don’t even consider me an expert on anything. Currently, the hot topic is Generative AI, and I am just an ordinary user (experimenting with Chat-GPT and midjourney and the like). Generative AI is so disruptive that it really turns everything upside down, and the only way to proceed is to embrace it and use it for your own advantage. It’s really foolish not to do so. I see endless business opportunities being enabled that were unthinkable just one year ago. But as always, luck is with the diligent; it is not enough to identify opportunities and have ideas. The success depends on the proper and diligent execution of specific use cases, and on understanding the entire ecosystem around it.

8. According to Global Data, the metaverse is considered the next paradigm shift in technology. What are the implications of this change for businesses?

The metaverse and generative AI go hand-in-hand, as generative AI is all about generating the content needed for the metaverse. However, I am not a firm believer in “the” metaverse, as there is no such thing as a “single” metaverse. I also don’t believe in many metaverses, where people will spend most of their time; because the struggles of real life won’t allow us to do so. Instead, I see that the real world as we know it is inevitably enhanced and augmented with more and more information and spatial 3D data, experienced through mobile phones and maybe all sorts of 3D glasses in the future. Businesses have no other choice than to jump on that train. So every real-world product will need to have a visually accurate digital twin and all kinds of relevant meta-data, and this information will be made accessible in AR, as if it was a physical attachment to the real-world object.

9. What conditions must a company meet in order to become metaverse-ready?

Manufacturers of physical goods must embrace the thought of creating high-quality digital twins of their products. Whatever does not exist digitally will soon be overlooked completely in the physical world.

10. How Can Mindcraft AG aid businesses in navigating this change?

First, our clients typically don’t know how to create high-quality digital twins of their products—we can help them do it. Second, they don’t know how to optimize and maintain the data for productive use—we have the know-how, experience, and technology for just that.

11. Holoflow Studio offers volumetric 4D solutions to capture humans in motion. What role do you think volumetric humans will play in modern technology and various sectors of the economy?

They will play a crucial role in next-gen AR experiences. The cost of studios for volumetric captures was much too high in the past (easily 1M USD or more) and the hardware setup (camera calibration, etc.), and workflows were ridiculously cumbersome. Generative AI enables the creation of volumetric human captures without the need for excessive hardware, overly complicated maintenance, and costly workflows. Therefore, I expect that the time for mass usage of volumetric human captures has not even started yet. Everything we saw till now was just child’s play in comparison to the tsunami of high-quality 4D captures we will see in the near future. My expectation is that this will disrupt all, specifically the fashion and musical industry.

12. Personally, what interests you about volumetric humans?

Generally, the shape and motions of the human body are very complex and beautiful—humans are naturally attracted by it, and you want to memorize precious moments with your loved ones. It’s the same as with photos and videos, but with volumetric captures, it is in 3D/4D. Can you imagine a better memory of your family, kid, or baby than in volumetric 4D?

13. Would you like to be captured in 4D?

Of course – just tell me where and how! 😀

14. What is your advice for a startup in its early stages?

Never ever give up, no matter what. Reward those who work hard and are loyal as much as you can. Focus on the market, not on investors. Beware of parasites who just suck out your time, energy, and money without contributing anything to the success. Never act out of revenge, don’t regret, learn from mistakes, forgive, and move on. Keep your values and trust in the value of your work. Invest time into real-life relationships and learn to receive help and love from others. Remember that at the end of the day, business is only about satisfying human needs—nothing else. 

15. Last but not least, what do you think of the UAE as a place for metaverse business activities?

The visionaries in the UAE have the mindset that nothing is impossible to achieve—it’s the ultimate mindset needed in business, and I like it a lot. The fruits of that are clearly visible in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, and I also see the emirate of Sharjah on the rise. Surely, all other emirates will follow as well.

With ‘The Abraham Accords Declaration‘, the UAE was among the Arab nations that took the lead in (the long overdue) recognition of Israel as a sovereign state and in strengthening its ties with the West. This certainly results in a great blessing for the UAE and is very motivating for global companies and entrepreneurs to expand their activities in the UAE.

Regarding metaverse business ideas, I think the UAE is really one of the most interesting places in the world to be. There is a never-ending appetite for modern technology in the UAE!

16. How can people reach out to you on social media?

The best way to get in touch with me is on LinkedIn: Josua Hönger

Many thanks, Josua!

Note: The featured image is an AI-generated picture of a younger Josua Hönger!