"Your Command Center Shouldn't Run Hotter Than a Gaming Rig": How Magnify World Founder Matt Coleman is Bringing Hollywood Magic to Space Force, Why XR Brings Minority Report AI to Life, and the $500B Smart City That Showed Him the Future

In 1998, Jeff Bezos loaded his life into a car and drove across America to start Amazon. Matt Coleman read about it in Time magazine and thought: If he can do that, what's stopping me?

Two decades later, Coleman—a Producers Guild of America nominee and Advanced Image Society voting member—stands before one of the worlds first curved LED spherical wall at Patrick Space Force base, where military brass experience something they've never seen before: an immersive display system with no perceptible heat signature, despite running at 12K resolution. The same executives who've managed command centers for decades suddenly realize their facilities have been running hot, inefficient, and blind to what true situational awareness could be.

"The leadership was shocked," Coleman tells me from Sydney, where it's 6:30 AM and usually based in Los Angeles "These LED panels run so cool you can touch them. Meanwhile, their current command centers are like furnaces because flat screens have been cooking their operators for years."

Coleman's journey from launching global music acts at Warner and Sony for 15 years to pioneering the term "surround reality" for the U.S. Space Force reads like a masterclass in cross-industry innovation. After watching the music industry fumble its response to Napster while managing $75 million in sales, he built Txtstation—one of the first platforms to merge SMS voting with live TV graphics, raising $6 million in venture capital before selling to CommerceTel. When Palmer Luckey sold Oculus to Meta, Coleman launched Magnify World, showcasing AR/VR tech to governments across the Asia-Pacific. Now, his company Magnify World & Immersive-FX (under the Tiger Vision brand for DoD) holds 11 patents for spherical LED display systems that the Defense industry considers revolutionary.

The timing couldn't be more critical. As Space Force builds its identity as America's newest military branch, it faces a unique challenge: attracting digital natives who grew up on Call of Duty and expect their military tech to match their gaming rigs. Coleman's answer? Transform command centers and training facilities into environments that feel less like 1980s NASA and more like the bridge of a spacecraft from their favorite sci-fi franchise… except this one tracks real satellites and trains for actual orbital warfare.

You've witnessed the evolution from simple SMS-to-TV graphics at Txtstation to now patenting spherical LED display systems that Space Force and DoD are starting to adopt. What critical inflection point made you realize that traditional flat screens were insufficient for next-generation military training and command centers, and how does your Immersive-FX technology fundamentally change situational awareness?

"Ten years ago at my Magnify World expo, the hit product wasn't a VR headset—it was a geodesic dome," Coleman recalls. "This was 3D projection back then, not LED. But watching people's reactions when they stepped inside, I knew we were onto something fundamental about human perception."

The Magnify World conferences, which Coleman launched across the Asia-Pacific region in cities like Auckland, Melbourne, Shanghai, and Toronto, became proving grounds for immersive technologies. These events attracted thousands of attendees and featured speakers from companies like Google, Unity3D, IBM, SNAP, HP and Weta Workshop—Peter Jackson's visual effects powerhouse behind Lord of the Rings.

Coleman's real breakthrough came through serendipity and strategic thinking. After years of watching the projection industry stagnate, he encountered the patent holder for spherical LED systems and immediately recognized an untapped opportunity in defense applications.

"The projector companies had dominated military simulation for 20 years, but they were selling yesterday's technology at tomorrow's prices. Bulbs that cost fortunes to replace. Images that looked like they were from 2004. Maintenance windows that took systems offline for days."

These weren't minor inconveniences, they were operational liabilities. Military training facilities reported spending collectively millions annually on projector bulb/projector replacements alone, with some facilities requiring dedicated staff just to manage the constant maintenance cycle. The image quality degradation over time meant that pilots training for night operations were essentially looking at washed-out approximations of what they'd encounter in real combat scenarios.

Everything changed at the Space Power Conference in Orlando last December, where Coleman's team made their boldest statement yet. "We installed a 28-foot wide curved LED wall, 10 feet high. When you put someone in the middle of that curved environment (not looking at a flat screen but surrounded by photorealistic imagery), they stop viewing and start experiencing."

This distinction between viewing and experiencing isn't just marketing rhetoric. Rather, it reflects fundamental differences in how our brains process information. Research in spatial cognition shows that curved displays activate different neural pathways than flat screens, engaging our peripheral vision and spatial processing centers in ways that dramatically improve information retention and decision-making speed. Studies have found that curvatures of 600 mm and 1200 mm were more legible and less visually fatiguing than a flat display (Lin et al., 2016), while impeding effective eye movements made subsequent retrieval of spatial memory slower and less accurate (Yamamoto & Philbeck, 2013). The University of Maryland found that those who used the head-mounted display recalled the faces 8.8% more accurately, attributing success to leveraging their innate vestibular and proprioceptive senses—elements absent with flat displays.

Coleman elaborates on the profound shift this creates: "In a traditional command center, you're looking at windows of information. It's like trying to understand a battlefield through a series of postcards. With our spherical and curved LED systems, you're not watching drone footage, you're there with the drone. You're not monitoring satellite trajectories on a screen, they're moving around you in real space."

The technical specifications alone represent a generational leap forward. Modern command centers running traditional displays face a cruel irony: the more screens they add to improve situational awareness, the more heat they generate, degrading operator performance.

"LED gives us up to 12K resolution with virtually zero heat emission. You can run these systems 24/7 without cooking your operators. The color depth is incredible: black is actually black, not that washed-out gray you get with projection. Your eyes don't fatigue because we can tune the brightness down to 5% and still maintain perfect clarity."

This level of visual fidelity matters more than civilians might realize. In space operations, operators might need to distinguish between active satellites and debris, track objects moving at 17,500 mph, or identify subtle anomalies in orbital patterns. The difference between true black and dark gray could mean the difference between spotting a threat and missing it entirely.

Coleman's final point drives home the operational impact: "When your command center isn't a furnace, when your eyes aren't straining, when information surrounds rather than confronts you, decision-making accelerates. We've seen it in our test deployments. Operators stay sharper longer, process complex scenarios faster, catch anomalies they'd miss on flat screens."

Your career spans Warner Music, Hollywood creative ventures, Sports Tech and now defense applications. How has your entertainment industry experience—from producing virtual concerts to managing global artists—informed your approach to designing immersive workspaces that must engage warfighters who've grown up as digital natives?

"At Warner, I learned that technology means nothing if it doesn't connect with your audience," Coleman reflects. "I watched the music industry completely misread digital disruption because they were focused on protecting CD sales instead of understanding how young people wanted to experience music."

The parallel to military technology adoption is striking. Just as the music industry initially fought digital distribution before eventually embracing streaming, the defense establishment has often been slow to adopt consumer-grade innovations that could revolutionize military operations. Coleman's outsider perspective allowed him to see opportunities that industry insiders missed.

His entertainment background extends far beyond music. Coleman's team includes veterans from some of the best technical producers from Hollywood, responsible for creating immersive theme park experiences. These are the same engineers who figured out how to make millions of visitors feel like they're actually in a galaxy far, far away at the Galaxy's Edge.

"My tech team comes from designing and building theme park experiences. They pioneered the patents for LED virtual production walls and location based entertainment. They understand that immersion isn't just about pixels, it's about creating environments where disbelief naturally suspends itself."

For example the Mandalorian's revolutionary use of LED walls (called "The Volume"), replaced traditional green screens with massive curved LED displays showing real-time rendered environments. This wasn't just a technical upgrade; it fundamentally changed how actors performed, allowing them to react to their actual surroundings rather than imagining them.

Coleman's own virtual concert project co-produced by his company FansXR pushed these boundaries even further. The Perfecto Verse, featuring electronic music legend Paul Oakenfold, wasn't just a streamed performance. Rather, it was an interactive metaverse experience that earned a prestigious Producers Guild of America nomination for innovation.

"We created an interactive Web GL experience where users could join the artist on stage, manipulate the environment, and become part of the performance. The military applications were obvious: put trainees inside the scenario, let them interact naturally, make the training indistinguishable from the real thing."

This understanding of experiential design becomes essential when considering Space Force's unique demographic challenge. Unlike other military branches that can recruit based on tradition and legacy, Space Force must attract tech-savvy digital natives who have better offers from SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Silicon Valley giants.

"Today's Guardians grew up as digital natives. They're not just familiar with gaming, they're esports athletes. They've spent thousands of hours in immersive digital environments. Then they join the Space Force and train on systems that look like they're from their parents' generation."

The expectation gap is real and quantifiable. The average gaming PC in 2024 runs at 4K resolution with ray-traced graphics and 144Hz refresh rates. Many military training systems still use 1080p projectors with visible pixelation and color banding. For a generation raised on photorealistic game engines, this technological downgrade sends a devastating message about institutional priorities.

Coleman's solution leverages his entertainment experience to create training environments that feel cutting-edge rather than antiquated: "If you want to attract and keep the best digital minds in Space Force, you can't hand them technology that's worse than their home gaming setup. Our LED domes aren't just training tools, they're recruitment assets. Imagine walking into a Space Force facility and seeing these massive curved walls displaying real-time satellite data, live space imagery, AI visualizations. That's how you compete with Silicon Valley for talent."

But perhaps the most valuable lesson from entertainment is about collective experience versus individual isolation. Concerts create community; successful military operations require the same. "Concerts aren't just about music, they're about collective energy. Military operations require the same thing. When a command team stands together inside a spherical display, watching the same operation unfold around them, they develop shared situational awareness that's impossible with individual screens or headsets."

While the industry focuses on VR/XR headsets, your patents describe dome environments that create shared immersive experiences without individual devices. What operational limitations of current VR/AR systems are you solving, and why is the DoD specifically seeking these "tele-immersion" platforms over traditional simulation approaches?

"Leadership needs helicopter views, not periscope views," Coleman states bluntly. "The feedback from DoD has been consistent: enclosed VR headsets create tactical tunnel vision. You might be managing a swarm of 100 drones, monitoring multiple battle spaces, coordinating with allied forces. You can't do that effectively when you're isolated in a headset."

The limitations Coleman identifies go beyond personal preference, they're rooted in operational reality. Modern military operations, particularly in space, require what the DoD calls "multi-domain awareness." A Space Force operator might simultaneously track thousands of pieces of space debris, monitor adversary satellite movements, coordinate with ground-based sensors, and communicate with allied space agencies. Try doing that while trapped in a VR headset.

The physical limitations of current VR technology compound these challenges. Studies show that even the most advanced VR headsets cause fatigue and nausea in a significant percentage of users after extended use (what researchers call "cybersickness)." For military operations that can stretch for hours or even days, this isn't just uncomfortable, it's mission-compromising.

"First, there's the isolation problem. Military operations are collaborative by nature. When everyone's in their own headset, you lose peripheral awareness of your team, verbal and non-verbal communication degrades, and shared understanding fractures."

Coleman draws from real-world military feedback to illustrate the point: "VR headsets cause fatigue after 30-45 minutes. Military operations run for hours, sometimes days. Our LED environments can run continuously without operator fatigue because there's no weight on your head, no screens pressed against your eyes, no isolation from your physical environment."

The DOD's growing interest in "tele-immersion", a term that originated in collaborative research between Internet2 and various universities, represents a fundamental rethinking of remote operations. Rather than simply viewing remote locations through screens, tele-immersion aims to create the sensory experience of actually being present in distant environments.

"Imagine drone operators who aren't just watching feeds on monitors but are virtually present in the operational environment. Satellite controllers who aren't tracking dots on screens but standing in space among the assets they're managing. This isn't science fiction. We're deploying these capabilities now."

The integration possibilities expand exponentially when you combine dome environments with selective AR overlays. Unlike the binary choice between physical and virtual reality, Coleman's approach offers a spectrum of augmentation.

"Operators can wear lightweight AR glasses like Microsoft HoloLens or Apple Vision Pro that overlay additional data while maintaining awareness of the physical space and their teammates. One operator might highlight a specific satellite's telemetry that only they see until they choose to share it on the main dome display. It's like Minority Report, but it actually works."

The reference to Minority Report, Steven Spielberg's 2002 film featuring gesture-controlled holographic interfaces, has become something of a running joke in military technology circles. Everyone wants it, but previous attempts to recreate it have fallen short. Coleman's system might be the first to deliver on that vision.

The scalability argument proves particularly compelling for complex space operations: "You can have 20 different content streams running simultaneously on our LED walls—live drone feeds, satellite imagery, AI analysis, weather data, communication channels. Try managing that in a VR headset. More importantly, commanders can step back and see the entire operational picture while specialists focus on specific elements. That hierarchical awareness is impossible with individual headsets."

Your white paper describes combining LED displays with cameras, sensors, AR headsets, and auto-stereo data tables to advance human performance. Can you walk us through a specific use case where this multi-modal approach has demonstrated measurable improvements in decision-making speed or mission effectiveness?

"At the Mars Conference with University of Central Florida, we did something that made everyone stop and pay attention," Coleman begins. "UCF has a lunar landing pad where they test self-repairing robots. We live-streamed that feed directly into our LED simulator at the conference venue. Suddenly, people weren't watching a robot test, they were standing on the moon watching it happen."

The Amazon re:MARS conference, focused on Machine learning, Automation, Robotics, and Space, represents Jeff Bezos's vision for bringing together cutting-edge researchers and industry leaders. Coleman's demonstration there wasn't just a technical showcase; it was a proof of concept for how space operations could be revolutionized.

The multi-modal integration Coleman describes represents a symphony of technologies working in concert. Each element serves a specific purpose while contributing to a unified operational picture that exceeds the sum of its parts. "This is what's possible, operators are equipped with AR glasses that could identify specific components on the robot and overlay diagnostic data. Hand gestures allow them to pull that data onto the main LED wall for group analysis. Acoustic sensors picked up operational sounds that revealed mechanical issues before they showed up visually. The auto-stereo table displayed a 3D holographic twin of the robot that operators could manipulate to plan repairs."

This isn't just impressive tech, it is functional integration that solves real operational challenges. In actual lunar operations, every second of communication delay matters. By creating an immersive telepresence environment, operators could make decisions as if they were physically present, dramatically reducing response times.

The deployment at Patrick Space Force Base, home to Space Launch Delta 45 and the Forge innovation centre are some of the nation's most critical space operations, has provided even more concrete evidence of the technology's impact. "In traditional setups, operators might take 15-20 seconds to correlate information across multiple flat screens (looking left, right, checking different monitors, mentally assembling the picture). In our immersive environment, that correlation happens almost instantly because the information exists in spatial relationship to itself."

Those 15-20 seconds might not sound like much, but in space operations, they're an eternity. A piece of space debris traveling at orbital velocity covers nearly 100 miles in that time. An anti-satellite weapon could complete critical maneuvers. A cybersecurity breach could compromise entire satellite constellations.

Coleman's ambition along with a Space Force Association partnership is to attract and test natural disaster technology for example FireSat illuminates another transformative application. Developed by Muon Space with funding from Google's philanthropic arm and the Earth Fire Alliance, FireSat represents the future of orbital fire detection. "We're seeking partnerships with this and similar tech like FireSat, which can detect fires the size of a classroom from orbit. Their AI predicts fire spread across 200 variables. In a traditional command center, that's 200 data points on spreadsheets and flat maps. In our system, you're standing inside a 3D environment where fire prediction paths light up around you, wind patterns flow visually through the space, and evacuation routes optimize in real-time based on your position in the virtual environment."

The California wildfire connection hits particularly close to home for Coleman, whose former residence was among the first destroyed in recent fires. This personal experience drives his passion for leveraging space technology for disaster response, a perfect example of dual-use capabilities that benefit both military and civilian populations.

The volumetric capture capability adds yet another dimension to training effectiveness. Traditional military training often relies on written procedures or video demonstrations that lose crucial details in translation. "We can place personnel in a capture studio (essentially a dome with 140 cameras), and create perfect digital twins of their movements. When new Guardians train, they're not following abstract procedures; they're watching exact replicas of expert operators performing tasks. Every gesture, every decision point, every moment of hesitation or confidence is captured and can be analyzed."

This approach addresses one of the military's most persistent training challenges: institutional knowledge transfer. When experienced operators retire, their expertise often walks out the door with them. Volumetric capture preserves not just what they did, but how they did it—the subtle body language, the sequence of attention, the rhythm of decision-making that separates experts from novices.

Even NASA has taken notice, particularly regarding one specific limitation of current technology that seems minor but has major implications. "Their current projection systems can't accurately simulate looking at the sun, it's just a white blob. Our LED systems can recreate the actual experience of solar observation with proper filtering effects. That might sound minor, but when you're training astronauts for spacewalks where accidentally looking at the sun could be catastrophic, accuracy matters."

You've worked as a futurist for the world's largest smart city project with a $500 billion budget, and now you're implementing similar technologies for Space Force Awareness Centers. What patterns do you see between civilian smart city command centers and military C2 environments, and how might these converge as space becomes increasingly commercialized and contested?

"When I worked with NEOM, I realized something profound: the command center for a smart city and a military base are essentially identical," Coleman observes. "Both need to monitor multiple data streams, respond to emergencies, coordinate resources, and maintain situational awareness across complex, interconnected systems."

NEOM, Saudi Arabia's $500 billion smart city project, represents perhaps the most ambitious urban development in human history. Planned to cover 10,000 square miles along the Red Sea, it aims to be the world's first cognitive city, where artificial intelligence manages everything from traffic flow to energy distribution. Coleman's role as a futurist there gave him unprecedented insight into how massive sensing networks, AI systems, and human operators must work together.

The convergence Coleman identifies isn't theoretical, it's already manifesting across industries. Modern urban operations centers increasingly resemble military command facilities, with banks of screens, real-time data feeds, and crisis response protocols that would be familiar to any military operator.

‘Another user case is from the oil and gas sector because they need to monitor offshore platforms, track tanker movements, and prevent disasters. Their command centers look exactly like military C2 facilities. The fire departments want the same volumetric displays to coordinate emergency responses. The technology needs are converging because the complexity challenges are identical."

This convergence accelerates in space, where the traditional boundaries between military and civilian operations are already blurred. SpaceX alone operates over 8,000 active Starlink satellites—more than every military space asset combined, with a total of over 9,350 launched. Amazon’s Project Kuiper has begun active deployment, with over 100 satellites already in orbit toward a planned network of more than 3,200. OneWeb (now Eutelsat OneWeb) maintains its 648-satellite first-generation constellation and plans to add 340 more by 2029. The orbital environment has become a crowded marketplace where military and commercial interests intersect constantly.

"Unlike traditional military branches, the Space Force must coordinate with commercial satellite operators, NASA, international partners, and private space companies. Their awareness centers can't just track military assets. They need to visualize the entire orbital environment, including thousands of commercial satellites, debris fields, and international spacecraft."

A natural disaster technology like FireSat Coleman mentioned earlier exemplifies this dual-use convergence. Originally conceived as a civilian climate monitoring system, its capabilities have obvious military applications for battlefield damage assessment, humanitarian response, and strategic planning.

"Here's a system originally developed for civilian fire detection, funded by Google's nonprofit and Earth Fire Alliance. But the Space Force recognizes that monitoring environmental disasters from orbit is a dual-use capability. Natural disasters affect military readiness. Climate events influence strategic planning. The same visualization system that helps California fight wildfires could help the military respond to humanitarian crises."

Coleman's vision extends beyond current applications to a future where the distinction between civilian and military command centers becomes largely academic. "In five years, I predict you won't be able to tell the difference between a smart city command center and a military awareness facility. Both will use AI agents to process vast data streams. Both will employ predictive analytics to anticipate problems. Both will need immersive visualization to make sense of complexity that exceeds human cognitive limits."

This prediction gains credibility when considering the rapid advancement of AI capabilities. NVIDIA's Omniverse platform already allows creation of city-scale digital twins. Google's DeepMind has demonstrated AI systems that can manage complex infrastructure more efficiently than human operators. The question isn't whether AI will transform command and control, it's how quickly humans can adapt to working alongside these systems.

The manufacturing component of Coleman's strategy reflects another convergence: the reshoring of critical technology production. Taking advantage of the CHIPS Act, Immersive-FX partners are planning to establish LED manufacturing in Texas, joining a broader movement to bring strategic technology production back to American soil.

"We're bringing LED production to Texas, taking advantage of CHIPS Act funding. Just like Anduril is building their facility in Ohio, we're part of this broader reshoring of critical defense technology. The same LED walls that monitor Space Force satellites could manage Tesla's autonomous vehicle fleet or coordinate Amazon's drone deliveries. The underlying technology is identical—only the application differs."

Looking at the trajectory from projection to LED, from individual headsets to shared immersion, from flat screens to spherical environments—what's the next evolutionary leap you're working on? What should we expect to see in military visualization systems in the next few years?

"November changes everything," Coleman says with conviction. "We're launching the world's first desktop immersive LED system. Imagine a personal command center that's only four to six feet in diameter but can cast to a 65-foot spherical wall. Every Guardian could have their own AI agent running on their desktop system, then share critical insights to the main dome when needed."

This democratization of immersive technology could fundamentally alter military operations. Rather than a few expensive command centers, every operator could have access to immersive visualization, creating a distributed network of enhanced decision-makers.

The AI integration Coleman envisions goes far beyond current implementations. Today's military AI assists with specific tasks: image recognition, threat detection, pattern analysis. Tomorrow's AI agents will be more like cognitive partners. "NVIDIA's digital twin technology, Amazon's Kuiper constellation, Microsoft's mixed reality platforms, all of this converges in our LED environments. We're not just displaying information anymore; we're creating intelligent spaces that understand context, predict needs, and adapt to operators' cognitive loads."

The implications are staggering. Imagine walking into a command center that recognizes you, knows your mission, understands your cognitive preferences, and automatically configures the visual environment to optimize your performance. Information you need appears before you ask for it. Irrelevant data fades into the background. The environment itself becomes an extension of your cognitive process.

Coleman's timeline for training content generation represents another leap forward: "Instead of creating training scenarios over six months, AI will generate them in three weeks based on real-world data." This isn't just about speed. Rather, it's about relevance. Current military training often uses scenarios that are months or years old by the time they're deployed. AI-generated content could incorporate yesterday's satellite observations, last week's adversary movements, and this morning's intelligence reports. Training would always reflect current reality rather than historical approximations.

The mobile deployment capability Coleman describes could revolutionize expeditionary operations. "We're developing containerized LED command centers––two shipping containers that bolt together to create instant immersive facilities anywhere in the world. Deploy them to forward bases, disaster zones, or allied nations. Stand up a full C2 capability in hours instead of months."

These aren't stripped-down field versions, they're full-capability command centers that happen to be mobile. The same immersive environment available at Cheyenne Mountain could be operational at a forward base in the Pacific within hours of deployment.

International collaboration takes on new dimensions in Coleman's vision. The Combined Space Operations Center already coordinates with allies, but current technology limits true integration.

"Imagine NATO exercises where every nation has compatible LED command centers. Real-time sharing of immersive environments. Joint training where German operators in Berlin train alongside Guardians in Colorado Springs, both groups standing in the same virtual space, seeing the same threats, developing shared responses." This level of integration could transform alliance operations. Rather than sharing PowerPoints and video feeds, allies could literally share perspective, developing intuitive understanding of each other's capabilities and constraints.

But Coleman saves his most profound observation for last—the generational transformation already underway. "We're designing for digital natives who expect technology to be intuitive, immersive, and intelligent. The young Guardians joining today will spend their careers in these environments. By the time they're leading the Space Force in 20 years, the idea of flat screen command centers will seem as archaic as paper maps. They'll think in three dimensions, collaborate in virtual spaces, and command AI agents as naturally as they text today."

This isn't just technological evolution. It's cognitive evolution. Just as fighter pilots developed new spatial reasoning skills, space operators immersed in 3D environments will develop new ways of processing complex information. The technology doesn't just display data differently; it fundamentally changes how humans think about space operations.

Coleman's parting thought captures the strategic stakes: "We're not just upgrading displays, we're revolutionizing how humans perceive and process information in defense of their nations. The countries that master this technology will have decision-making advantages that compound over time. That's why everything we're building stays in America, manufactured in America, secured for American interests. Because in the competition for space superiority, the difference between seeing and truly understanding could determine who controls the ultimate high ground."

Author's Analysis

Matt Coleman represents a new breed of defense innovator: the entertainment executive who asks why military personnel endure worse technology than gamers. His journey from Warner Music to Space Force contractor reveals how institutional blindness perpetuates unnecessary suffering. It took someone who'd spent years optimizing concert experiences to notice that command centers were literally cooking their operators—a basic ergonomic failure that degraded performance for decades while everyone accepted it as normal.

His dismissal of VR headsets as "periscope views" when commanders need "helicopter views" cuts to the heart of military effectiveness. While Silicon Valley pushes individual immersion, Coleman recognizes that warfare remains fundamentally collaborative. A commander isolated in a headset can't read body language, direct attention with a gesture, or step back for perspective. The LED dome preserves these human dynamics while adding spatial visualization that makes complexity intuitive—critical when tracking 17,000 mph objects that could trigger orbital cascades.

The convergence Coleman identifies between smart city and military command centers reflects the dissolving boundaries of modern conflict. When SpaceX operates more satellites than the Pentagon, when climate disasters demand military response, when cyber attacks flow seamlessly between civilian and defense infrastructure, the old categories collapse. His NEOM experience designing for a $500 billion smart city translates directly to Space Force operations because the complexity challenges are identical: too much data, too little time, human cognition as the bottleneck.

Perhaps most profound is Coleman's understanding that Space Force faces an existential recruitment crisis. Digital natives raised on 144Hz gaming monitors won't accept 1080p projectors with visible pixelation. His LED domes serve dual purposes: operational enhancement and cultural signal, telling potential Guardians that this branch values the technological sophistication they demand. The desktop systems launching in November could democratize this capability, giving every operator their own AI-enhanced command sphere.

But Coleman's outsider success raises uncomfortable questions. If it takes a music executive to recognize that military facilities shouldn't run hotter than gaming rigs, what other obvious improvements is the defense establishment missing? As China and Russia race to militarize space while American procurement crawls through five-year cycles, can insurgent innovators like Coleman move fast enough to maintain advantage? And when every Guardian commands AI agents within immersive environments, processing information in ways flat-screen warriors never could—will human cognition itself become the next domain of competition?

About Matt Coleman

Matt has over 25 years’ experience in media, entertainment, broadcast, government partnerships, and emerging technology. He has been awarded several technology and innovation accolades, developed multiple patents and in 2023 was nominated by the Producers Guild of America for best immersive innovation and most recently best broadcast technology in 2024.

His latest project Tiger Vision (Immersive-FX) holds a range of patents around LED Spherical immersive display technology that has been showcased to the Department of Defense, installed at Space Force and other locations around North America. He is a member of the Space Force Association and a volunteer.

Matt is an experienced CEO and General Manager, having previously worked for Warner and Sony for over 15 years and held senior positions managing tech companies which duties included, development studio, managing operations and technical teams, business development, budgeting, venture capital and being an industry leader for sports technology, broadcasters, and a speaker at major events such as AWE, NAB, Davos, CES and more.

At FansXR an immersive XR sports tech company, he personally negotiates global league partnerships and most recently penned a multiyear deal with the NFL/Genius Sports, FIFA Women’s World Cup/Stats Perform. He oversees operations and is a co-founder. FansXR offers Xtended Reality streaming and a real time animation gaming platform offering users the ability to control multiple cameras/AR overlays for sports programming enabling full control of their experience on any digital device.

His work with Magnify World championed emerging tech with Fortune 100 companies and due to the success, he was awarded management rights to create an immersive studio, and then founded one of the world’s first augmented and virtual reality companies in 2015.  

Matt has also been a futurist advisor around emerging tech and presented multiple times around mobile device experiences to the team at NEOM the world’s largest smart city in the Middle East which has a budget of $500 billion.

Over the last 7 years he has been invited to share his knowledge to multiple Fortune 100 companies around the world like Meta, PWC, CAA and multiple governments.

He has been at the forefront of 5G and edge computing delivering real time customer experiences using mixed reality or augmented reality programs across the globe for the last 9 years and is a pioneer breaking new ground for a range of industries from education, gaming, enterprise, entertainment, investment, integration of hardware architecture, and design of products.

Furthermore, his creative skills have driven over 20 projects and managed the company’s technical teams and finances to deliver cutting edge projects for major clients and start-ups having worked with Coke, SKY City Casino Group, HP, Snap, T Mobile, Qualcomm, HP, Viacom/CBS, Intel, NVIDIA, Google and many more.The Magnify Business Summit attracted over 6,000 delegates pre-Covid and launched in Toronto, Auckland, Sydney, Melbourne and was represented with Asia Pacific local governments and the Space Force Association.

In addition, the Magnify Business Summit showcases world-class AR/VR/mixed reality experiences in a range of industry sectors including film and TV, advertising/branding, education, tourism, Space, Cyber and live events. The event showcases start-ups at the cutting edge of innovation to fortune 500 companies such as Google, HP, Snap, Oculus, HTC, Samsung, Lenovo, NHL, Paramount Pictures/Viacom, WETA, Novo Studios and many more.

Driving awareness of the technology Matt launched the companies YouTube channel that mustered over 60 of the world’s best leaders in the sector and were all curated and interviewed by Matt himself.

In 2020, he became co-founder and director of Play Tally (www.playtally.com) with Russell Wilson (NFL), and Chad Hurley (Co-Founder of Youtube) creating a fan engagement technology using free to play prediction web-based experiences powered by pari-mutuel software.

Matt has been a regular on-stage moderator and keynote speaker and has presented in Shanghai at the Yangpu Innovation Forum as a guest of the local government alongside Ali Sports, other highlights include Canadian Tech Week in 2018/2019, NAMM keynote and DEW Los Angeles and speaker at DAVOS part of the world economic forum and the Canadian Stock Exchange around the Metaverse. He has also negotiated government partnerships in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.

Previously, Matt worked for Warner and Sony entertainment for 15 years working as head of sales and marketing and responsible for $75,000,000 in sales. Post Warner he then founded mobile company Txtstation (interactive TV mobile marketing company) and raised over $6 million in venture capital and sold the company in March 2011 to San Diego North American company CommerceTel.

Matt launched Txtstation into the European/North American markets and moved to New York and Los Angeles where he successfully set up the first telecommunication connections to 250 million cell phones and sold the company’s original contracts with the FIFA World Cup, SKY TV Italy for the Champions League, Fox USA, KCAL and KCBS USA, Time Warner (TNT Sports) and worked with the various leagues in the USA such as the NBA via their broadcast deal partners.

Matt has been an exclusive member of the Hollywood based Advanced Image Society, the organization represents world-leading immersive technologies centered around the future of film and television production. The society was founded by Disney, Dreamwork’s, Sony, Paramount, IMAX, and Dolby.

For more information about Immersive-FX and Tiger Vision (DoD division), or to schedule demonstrations at innovation centers, contact Matt Coleman directly.

Upcoming Events

• Space Power Conference - December 2024, Orlando, FL - Immersive-FX will showcase next-generation LED systems
• Space Cities - November 2024, Capitol Hill Club, Washington, DC - VIP event on space industry convergence
• AI Institute Conference - February 2025, Adelaide, Australia - Focus on defense and AI applications