CastAR, the new HMD technology that promises to bridge the gap between augmented reality and virtual reality is almost over—raising well over 200% it’s original target, we take a look at its progress.

A Kickstarter, Expertly Executed

CastAR, the new Virtual / Augmented reality system developed by ex-Valve employees Jeri Ellsworth and Rick Johnson, is in its final few hours of its Kickstarter campaign – and there’s little argument as to its success.

I can well foresee in the near future (if this hasn’t already happened) a new specialist field developing in PR and Marketing – that of the Crowd-funding Campaign Consultant. Kickstarting is rapidly becoming an art. We’ve seen (and backed) our fair share of Kickstarters here on RoadToVR, but it’s generally easy to pick out those whose execution has had real thought and planning put into it. CastAR’s campaign was a textbook example on how you should do it. As a result, the campaign’s progress has been swift to raise funds:

From Jeri Ellsworth’s heartfelt pre-Kickstarter 18 month potted history of CastAR, through what seems to have been a gruelling 30 day PR offensive, both Rick and Jeri’s enthusiasm and obvious passion for the CastAR project remained seemingly undimmed. Healthy and interesting project updates showing both the technical feats the team have accomplished and also the range of potential applications CastAR technology could be applied to. Also the team were able to keep the interest high with announcements such as the integration of Leap Motion and the early support for the open source Vireio Perception drivers for the devices VR Clip-On accessory.

But most effective was the reactions of real people trying the system for the first time. As with the Oculus Rift, CastAR is one of those devices you really need to experience for yourself. Filmed at Maker Faire 2013, California back in May, the team officially unveiled their work to the public for the very first time:

Stretch Goals Progress

The campaign has blown through its first 3 stretch goals (pictured below) and may just squeeze the fourth before the curtain falls. The $900k goal promises the addition of a high-speed on board Gyroscope for additional movement tracking accuracy.

Backers can expect early editions of the CastAR glasses and accessories to ship in September 2014, although it must be said that’s a challenging goal to reach. As with the now legendary Oculus Rift shipping delays, expect some wiggle room on these dates before you get your hands on the kit.

We can’t wait to see the system for ourselves and find out where this unique approach to immersive 3D gaming might take take the industry and what other uses the team might dream up in the mean time.

Back the CastAR KickStarter Here

The post CastAR Kickstarter Enters Final Stretch With Almost $900k Raised appeared first on Road to Virtual Reality.

It looks like Valve is ready to take the gloves off at Steam Dev Days 2014. Two talks to be given at the event will include a demonstration of Valve’s secret prototype VR HMD that is “capable of stunning experiences”, and a discussion on forthcoming changes to Steam to “support and promote virtual reality games.” Palmer Luckey will also take to the stage to speak about best practices for VR developers.

Steam Box, VR and, the Real Next Gen

As we head into what promises to be one of the least inspiring new generation console release in living memory, Valve’s Steam Box and the ever growing promise of living room virtual reality is a breath of fresh air for ageing gamers like me. This is why recently released details of Valve’s forthcoming Steam Developer Days conference in January are incredibly enticing. Not only do they once again highlight Valve’s continuing belief and commitment to headsets such as the Oculus Rift, they also show this commitment extends and may indeed be integral to Valve’s forthcoming Steam Box platform.

Amongst talks designed to wean Windows game developers away from the cosy world of Windows and DirectX to the wide open plains of Linux and OpenGL, there are not one but three talks during Steam Developer Days focussing on the promise and the practicalities of virtual reality. Of particular interest to those who have followed persistent rumours that Valve has been working on their own HMD is this:

Michael Abrash: What VR Could, Should, and Almost Certainly Will Be within Two Years

We’ve figured out what affordable Virtual Reality (VR) hardware will be capable of within a couple of years, and assembled a prototype which demonstrates that such VR hardware is capable of stunning experiences. This type of hardware is almost certainly going to appear in short order, and the time to starting developing for it is now. This talk will discuss what the hardware is like, and the kinds of experiences it makes possible. A few attendees will be randomly selected to try out the prototype following the talk.

Michael Abrash has of course been visible on the VR scene for some time (he blogs about his research here). He’s a vocal supporter of virtual and augmented reality but has often been very careful to rein in expectations and set ideals for both fledgling technologies. In a talk given at GDC 2013 he outlines his vision and pitfalls that face developers in the very near future. His history and grasp of gaming technology, having been fundamental in the early development of PC gaming and researching VR and AR internally for Valve, has lead him to become one of the most respected commentators on VR and AR.

An augmented reality prototype from Valve based on existing hardware, New York Times 2012

What have Valve cooked up in those R&D labs that only a select few have seen thus far? A good hint comes from Oculus, whose latest blog update offers a few details about Valve’s prototype HMD:

At Gaming Insiders, [Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe] talked about using a new VR prototype at Valve, which combines ultra low latency, precise head and positional tracking with low-persistence visuals for one of the most immersive and comfortable experiences ever.

In the same post, Oculus says that they’re applying Valve’s work to the forthcoming Oculus Rift consumer version:

We can’t share all the details yet, but we’re taking the insights we’ve learned from that demo and applying them to the development process to make the consumer Rift even better.

One thing’s for sure, Valve shows no signs of  diminishing its believe that virtual reality along with its Steam Box is where the real next generation of gaming will take place. Perhaps predictably, I agree wholeheartedly.

Joe Ludwig: Virtual Reality and Steam

Come and hear what Valve is working on in Steam to support and promote Virtual Reality (VR) games. This includes a discussion of the Steam Overlay in VR, Steam store changes for VR, and our VR plan for Steamworks.

Ludwig has been working right alongside Abrash, having also given a talk at GDC 2013, ‘What We Learned Porting Team Fortress 2 to Virtual Reality,’ and talking publicly about the future of VR and how Valve will be part of it. From the synposis of his talk at Steam Dev Days, it sounds like Valve is highly committed to bringing the world of steam to VR.

Palmer Luckey: Porting games to Virtual Reality

The team at Oculus has spent time helping a variety developers bring their existing content to virtual reality across multiple platforms. This talk will cover many of the best practices, technical hurdles that VR developers should be aware of, and some of the counter-intuitive approaches we’ve seen work.

In this new and growing world of virtual reality, developers are still learning what does and doesn’t work in VR. Following right alongside Ludwig’s talk, Oculus inventor and co-founder Palmer Luckey will take to the stage to guide developers toward best-practices for VR development.

If there’s one company who could single-handedly legitimize virtual reality, it’s Valve. To hear their level of support for VR is exciting news for gamers and industry folk alike.

Hat tip to reddit user rafal1 for pointing out the Steam Dev Days itinerary.

The post Valve to Demonstrate Prototype VR HMD and Talk Changes to Steam to “Support and Promote VR Games” appeared first on Road to Virtual Reality.

We put your questions to the people behind the virtual reality HMD with a 210 degree field of view. Here are team InfinitEye’s answers, exclusive to Road to VR.

Your Questions: Answered.

You may remember, a few weeks ago I headed out to Toulouse, France to meet with Stephane, Lionel and Robin—the team behind the virtual reality HMD which offers a staggering 210 degree field of view. Team InfinitEye were gracious hosts, and in addition to showing me around their beautiful city they were kind enough to show me what a panoramic VR experience feels like. I was impressed. Not only had this small, dedicated team of friends designed and built this amazing device from scratch, they’d also largely written their own software, APIs and produced their own bespoke demos. To call them dedicated and passionate is to undersell them somewhat, they’re obsessed!

I was the first person in the world outside this tight-knit group to experience the device; unsurprisingly people have questions about it. Before I embarked on  my trip I asked you, the readers, what you’d like to ask the team. So, the team have taken time out of their hectic schedule to answer them in detail, so that Road to VR readers can get your heads behind the device so to speak. Let’s get started.

The Hardware

Road to VR: Describe the components you use to construct the InfinitEye and their individual costs.

InfinitEye: We use two 7″ HD screens (1280×800) 200$, 4 high quality Fresnel lenses (2 per eye) 20$, a 3 DOF tracker from YEI 99$, expanded PVC sheets for the casing ~10$, black paint 5$, mount stuff ~25$, cables ~12$.

Road to VR: What’s the vertical FOV of the device?

InfinitEye: Vertical FOV is ~90°. We designed our prototypes to have the vertical center of the screens shifted a little towards the ground in order to have a more natural vertical FOV. As the human vision you can see more in the lower part than in the upper part.

Road to VR: How much does the current prototype weigh and what are its dimensions?

InfinitEye: We have 2 different designs for our prototypes (see image at top of this page):

• The initial version with an elastic band is ~400g total with the cables.
• The current prototype is 354g for the headset, ~200g more for the head mount + aluminum bar and screws + top strap band + cables etc. Total weight is 553g total.

Note that those are only early designs which are intended to be improved.

Road to VR: What tracker is used and what are its specifications?

InfinitEye: YEI 3-space sensor embedded, we use it in streaming data mode with a refresh rate of 1000Hz. It features 3 axis gyros, accelerometers and magnetometers and gives an accurate absolute orientation.

Road to VR: Have you considered any solutions for positional tracking?

InfinitEye: Yes, but it’s too soon for our team to disclose anything on the subject.

Road to VR: Can you go into more detail on the lens assembly (i.e. stacked Fresnel) and why you need 2 lenses per eye?

InfinitEye: We have to use 2 stacked Fresnel lenses to get a sufficient magnification. We couldn’t find retail lenses with a short enough focal length with a large enough size to fit the InfinitEye design. However we hope that we will be able to manufacture custom lenses. It would reduce the weight, improve the quality (less smearing) and hopefully reduce the cost.

Road to VR: Describe the breakout / junction box and connectivity to the InfinitEye from it (i.e. how many cables, is USB / power sent up spare pins on the HDMI cables etc.)

InfinitEye: The breakout board takes 2 HDMI, a 12V power and USB as inputs then send the different signals and power to the 2 screens and tracking data through very thin HDMI cables. It’s a temporary solution which allows us to have low weight cables but we will certainly have custom cables (maybe one instead of two).

InfinitEye: Expanded PVC, 2mm thick, completely water resistant and not as fragile as people might think (from the manufacturer data sheet, impact resistance is 15kj/m²). It’s not suitable for a finished product though.

Road to VR: What material might you use for a future, consumer version casing? How much might that weigh?

InfinitEye: We have different ideas to keep the casing very light but we need to perform some tests so we prefer not to disclose anything for the moment.

Road to VR: What are the minimum specifications for PCs to run games on the InfinitEye?

InfinitEye: A mid-range PC from 2012 should be enough but of course it depends on the game you want to play. For your information, our current setup is a core i7 CPU with a GTX 660 Nvidia graphics card and it works perfectly. The graphics card must have at least 2 HDMI/DVI outputs or 1 DisplayPort output (to be used with a specific device that splits the signal into 2 HDMI outputs).

Road to VR: What have you used for the head strap / harness? What might you use in a future, consumer model?

InfinitEye: The current prototype use a strap scavenged from a face shield made for gardening. An elastic band should be cheaper and help reduce the cost of the consumer product.

InfinitEye: The open design is great because your face skin can breathe and there is no fog on the lenses. We are considering making a removable light blocking system but since we might not keep this design this solution could become irrelevant. Note that we had a light blocking system on the first prototype which had an elastic band. We are in a stage where we are trying different designs to see what would be the best in terms of weight and comfort.

The post InfinitEye 210 Degree HMD Technical Q&A: How does High FOV Virtual Reality Work? appeared first on Road to Virtual Reality.

Today Avegant is revealing Glyph, the company’s vision for a consumer head mounted display which utilizes their virtual retinal display (VRD) technology. Glyph transforms from a pair of headphones to a head mounted display in seconds with a smart convertible design.

While Avegant has been showing their impressive virtual retinal display technology since October, they’ve been quick to note that it was only a proof of concept. Today they’ve taken the wraps off the consumer concept for their HMD which they’re calling Glyph.

Glyph uses a smart convertible design that houses the VRD in a fairly normal looking pair of over-ear headphones. Flip down the headband and suddenly you’re looking through the company’s virtual retinal display. Avegant says they’ll be showing off the Glyph prototype next month at CES 2014.

Avegant intends for Glyph to be “source agnostic;” able to connect to a wide swath of modern devices like game consoles, smartphones, and computers. The HMD will include integrated head tracking, according to the company.

“Avegant has made some great progress improving core technology that will make generalized virtual worlds possible,” goes a quote in the press release by Phillip Rosedale, creator of Second Life, making it sound like the company doesn’t want to ignore the potential of Glyph for virtual reality gaming.

With a limited 45 degree field of view, Glyph probably won’t be a direct competitor to the Oculus Rift. After talking with Avegant last month at Engadget Expand 2013, it seems like Avegant might be interested in eventually utilizing their tech for immersive virtual reality—for now, supporting existing games and media out of the box is their goal.

Today Avegant has also announced that the Kickstarter for Glyph will begin on January 22nd with pricing staring at $499. Glyph will have its own internal battery and ship with a HDMI/MHL cable, according to the company.

In November we met up with Avegant at Engadget Expand 2013 to check out their virtual retinal display technology. Here are my thoughts about what I saw:

Avegant’s Pre-Glyph Prototype HMD

I saw two different demos using the Avegant HMD prototype. The first of which was a series of standard side-by-side 3D videos, running from a laptop, which absolutely blew me away.

At one point I was looking at a sea turtle in shallow coral waters. Sunlight was beaming down from the surface and illuminating the turtle’s shell in a spectacular way—it was one of the most vivid and natural things I’ve ever seen on any display. The scene before me looked incredibly real, even though the field of view is not at immersive levels.

The image quality was also extremely impressive. The videos I saw looked to be at least 1080p to my eyes, but Avegant told me that they were only 720p, and while the Avegant HMD technically doesn’t have pixels, the micro-mirror array (and thus ‘resolution’) is 1280×800. Perhaps it’s the 100% fill factor, or the more natural light—whatever the case—I’m now a believer that there is more to a display’s quality than resolution. Avegant is definitely on to something special here.

It should be noted that I saw some blurring on around the edges of the image, but Avegant assured me that it would be fixed in future iterations.

Call of Duty: Ghosts didn’t look nearly as good as the side-by-side 3D videos and instead looked closer to what I would expect from a normal 720p display. I noticed some significant color-fringing when turning my head. The discrepancy was jarring… how could the same display look markedly different from one piece of content to the next (I saw absolutely no color fringing with the prior demo)? When I asked about this, Tang told me that Call of Duty: Ghosts unfortunately only runs at 540p on the PS3. He also suspected that the signal may have been interlaced, which could explain the color fringing. I’m also fairly certain that the game was not running in 3D. It’s possible that real world imagery is better represented with VRD technology than CGI; I’ll need to get my head back into the Avegant with more content to be sure.

We’ll be checking out Avegant’s latest Glyph prototype at CES 2014 next month.

What do you think of the design and price: Will it work? Would you wear it?

The post Avegant Reveals Glyph: Transforming HMD With Virtual Retinal Display, Kickstarter Starts at $499 appeared first on Road to Virtual Reality.

Road to VR is heading to Las Vegas to attend the annual Consumer Electronics Show in January, which is shaping up to be a Red Letter Day for Virtual Reality.

2014: The Year Virtual Reality Delivers on Its Promises?

John Carmack at E3 2012, now Oculus VR CTO

‘Virtual reality is cool but it’s a fad and a gimmick.’ This was the general consensus as the abrupt resurgence of VR began with the appearance of the Oculus Rift just 18 months ago now. In that short space of time we’ve seen the creation of Oculus VR and its subsequent meteoric rise from plucky startup to $75M technology darling of the industry. In its wake, a plethora of companies who had seemingly been in stasis waiting for a sign that commercial virtual reality was finally viable, exploded in a shower of Kickstarters: Sixense STEM, Tactical Haptics Reactive Grip, Virtuix Omni, and a tidal wave of crowd funded games promising Oculus Rift support. Not to mention the rapidly maturing of the 3D / VR Driver arena – spearheaded by vorpX, Vireio Perception and DDD’s TriDef Beta. If this is a fad, it’s trying its hardest to pretend not to be. All of which points towards 2014 teetering on the edge of delivering the promises it failed to back in the 90s.

Will You Be There? We’d Love To Talk to You!

If you’re involved in virtual reality hardware, gaming, or its related technologies, and you’d like to talk to us, please get in touch at the email addresses, twitter, or Facebook accounts on our About Page and we’ll do our best to set something up. We’d love to hear from you.

Ben and Paul’s Excellent Vegas Adventure

We think 2014 will be a make or break year for VR, so we felt it was immensely important that we were there to report on it right from the start. So, Road to VR Executive Editor Ben Lang and I are heading to Vegas to cover the event from beginning to end.

CES has traditionally been one of the lynchpins in the Consumer Electronics and videogaming calendar. It has a rich history replete with legendary product announcements and first showings and is attended by the world’s industry heavyweights and press. Held in the Las Vegas Convention and World Trade Center, the show kicks off with a press-only day Monday January 6th with the show proper between 7th–10th.

In truth, we don’t really know what to expect, but we can make some educated guesses at what me might see over the course of the show:

Oculus VR, DK2 and the Mysterious Prototype

Cliffy B Was Impressed – but what did he see?

We’ve been bombarded with snippets of social media reaction to Oculus VR’s mysterious cutting-edge prototype, apparently demonstrated to a handful of lucky and ecstatic developers and industry veterans. We think the chances of seeing that particular device may be slim, but the persistent rumours surrounding the existence of a 2nd Developer Kit (DK2) with a closer relationship to the final consumer edition, higher resolution screen and positional tracking refuse to die. Quite what Palmer and Co. have in store for us is anyone’s guess, but whatever it is we’ll be there to find out.

Read More: Oculus Raises $75 Million in Series B Funding, Latest Rift Prototype to be Revealed at CES in January

Virtuix Omni

It’s been a hell of a year for Virtuix, from their enormously successful Kickstarter campaign to touring the world to their recent appearance on Shark Tank. We expect to see the latest revision of their Omni prototype with improved tracking technology, as discussed with Ben Lang back at Engadget: Expand in November. Virtuix are no longer alone in the Omnidirectional Treadmill market however, with Cyberith’s Virtualiser gaining much credibility and admiration recently with their unique answer to the question “How do you walk through a virtual world?”.

Read More: Virtuix Omni VR Treadmill Hands-on and Interview with CEO Jan Goetgeluk

Avegant and Their New Glyph Prototype

At Engadget Expand 2013, Ben was extremely impressed with the startling image quality produced by the then early prototypes of Avegant’s ‘virtual retinal display’ technology. This dual DLP chip based solution was recently given its official name as Avegant released details of what their latest prototypes might look like—the Glyph looks an extremely enticing bit of kit. Currently targeting the portable entertainment market rather than Virtual Reality (yet), with just a 45 Degree field of view, the Glyph’s design alone is worthy of attention. Recent pictures tweeted by Avegant’s CTO Allen Evans of a working prototype mean we’re now hoping to get our hands on the new design for a closer look at CES.

Read More: Avegant Reveals Glyph: Transforming HMD With Virtual Retinal Display, Kickstarter Starts at $499

YEI Technology

Paul Yost, Head of R&D at YEI Technology

Despite a strong start, YEI failed to reach its Kickstarter campaign target recently. Their technically impressive and ambitious PrioVR consumer motion tracking solution is still unrivaled in its scope. Nevertheless, YEI have picked themselves up, dusted themselves down and are heading to CES, we hope to catch up with the team and discuss their thoughts on 2013 and what they have planned in 2014.

Read More: Exclusive Hands-on With the First PrioVR Prototype and YEI’s 3-Space Sensors

Sixense and Their STEM System

And of course, one of the more successful Kickstarter campaigns of 2013 was Sixense’s spiritual successor to the Razer Hydra controller, the STEM positional tracking system. Opting for a neat modular design, the system is essentially giving developers and enthusiasts an open invitation to innovate with precision spatial tracking in games and applications. More than that though, the STEM units themselves are small enough to be incorporated in other, 3rd party controller vessels. We’re hoping to have or first play with the system and with any luck the latest prototypes might be on hand to use.

8k Ultra HD Screens are Coming to CES

Alongside all that, I’m personally very much looking forward to going eyes-on with the glut of new ultra high resolution and high density display technologies which could ultimately inform the direction of consumer headsets in 2014 and beyond. High Density 4k displays are already beginning to appear and now 8k (some would argue actually ’4K’ due to horizontal resolution). The shrinking of these displays may hold the key to displays that unlock photorealistic capabilities for the new generation of Virtual Reality HMDs. Pure pixel density and resolution aside, OLED is finally poised to deliver on its promise as the successor to LCD with a glut of OLED displays on show from the big manufacturers. OLED is interesting due to its versatility and its unique VR friendly properties—namely the possibility to non uniform display shapes (curved displays) and its extremely fast pixel switching time—ideal for ghost-free, low latency displays vital for realistic virtual reality.

CES 2014 is sure to be filled with surprises and we look forward to bringing you the latest coverage direct from the show floor. See you in Vegas!

The post VR Poised to Hit Fever-pitch in 2014: It All Starts at CES in Las Vegas, Join Us There appeared first on Road to Virtual Reality.

Avegant invited Road to VR to have an early look at a prototype of their new transforming virtual retina display based HMD, targeted squarely at the portable entertainment market. Paul James goes hands on with the Avegant Glyph.

Obsessively Designed

“Yes, there will be a cover for the lenses”. This comment from Grant Martin, Avegant‘s Head of Marketing and Product Strategy in response to comments from Road to VR users. The statement belies a certain amount of weariness and frustration. The Avegant team have been working on 3 hours of sleep or less for weeks. They’ve been obsessively honing, measuring and tweaking their prototype in readiness for a near tidal wave of events they’re slated to be involved in over the CES period. The frustration isn’t directed at the commenter, it’s an indication of  the obsession the Avegant team have with their new product and that they simply can’t get their ideas integrated into the product quickly enough. It also highlights how keen they are to listen to constructive feedback.

Having already finalised the optics and formulated what they determine an optimal image, they’ve moved onto the product itself. That is, producing something that people want to buy. When I glibly ask what demographic Avegant are targeting with the Glyph, Ed retorts “People who watch movies and listen to music”, I probably deserved that. However, the Glyph certainly isn’t aiming for lowest common denominator when it comes to the AV experience.

What’s It Like?

I sit down to test the unit, looking just like the target renders we featured recently. The unit is designed to shift between Audio/Video and pure Audio mode. It accomplishes this by pivoting the bridge by 90 degrees, bringing the optics, mounted into the underside of the bridge to rest in front of your eyes. The pressure exerted by the bridge keeps the unit in place, with a little help from the user’s nose of course. It’s a neat idea and it looks great, but I had difficulty getting the unit to sit correctly on my ‘challengingly shaped’ head. The unit also allows you to move the bridge as an assembly in and out, in a similar way you’d tighten your headphones. Doing so certainly improves things and I can focus on the image in front of me. The unit produces an image with a 45 degree field of view, the visible portions of which give the impression of a 70-80″ projected image.

The team freely admit they’ve not yet spent enough time addressing ‘Human Factors’. These will be ironed out over the coming weeks as they continue to iterate design changed ahead of the final version.

The unit is designed to be universal, that is to fit as many heads and as many eyes as possible. To this end Avegant have implemented both IPD (Interpupillary Distance) adjustment and individual focus controls for the optics. IPD can be adjusted by two dials, one for each lens. Rotating the dials shift each lens left or right as required. Once you’re comfortable you can lock the adjustment in place by depressing a button between the two dials. It’s another example of attention to detail evident on this still early prototype. After tweaking for a little while, I found an extremely comfortable position.

So, what about that display? Ben Lang tried the development unit Avegant at the recent Engadget: Expand event in New York. To put it mildly he was impressed. As an old AV enthusiast from way back though, I have a tendency to nitpick. In truth, once the video started I found it difficult to criticise what I was seeing.

The first thing to note is the pixel structure – there barely is one. The Glyph benefits from using a brand new type of display VRD (virtual retina display) technology which is essentially an evolution of the now decades old DLP technology (Digital Light Processing), which uses thousands of controlled, spinning mirrors to reflect light into a user’s eyes. Texas Instruments saw what Avegant had in mind and chose them to be the first to integrate their newer, more advanced chips – now with reduced distance between each adjacent mirror. This means the screen door effect you get with other displays when viewed at close range is almost eliminated. Because the separation of pixels are almost eliminated, the perceived resolution is actually much higher and more realistic. The current prototype utilises 2 x 720 displays (one for each eye) but my perception of the image would have put it far beyond. The image sparkles as a result.

One interesting thing to note is that the team have designed the unit with a deliberate ability to reconnect with the real world easily. To explain, your vertical FOV is not entirely occluded, so those who are worried about being disconnected from reality when using the Glyph in public be assured the compromise on show here works quite well.

DLP displays were always hailed for their brightness, that is evident here in spaces. Colours too are incredibly vibrant, natural and, ignoring stereoscopy, have a three dimensional quality to them. It feels as if you’re gazing at an open window in a darkened room as light spills into your eyes in a way that feels extremely natural. My only criticism would be a tendency for bright whites to look a little hot, but in fairness this could be due to the source video.

But this is an HMD of dual functionality. Next to the first rate image, any shortcomings in the audio would of course be amplified, so the team designed and built custom titanium drivers. These drivers are complimented by ear cups with cavities sculpted to produce exactly the kind of found the team were looking for. The team iterated over many designs before they found what they were listening for, something that works well with music of all genres and movies too. Has all that work paid off, yes indeed it has. I listened to various audio tracks and bass felt taught and fast whilst low frequency response still low enough to give depth. Vocals were transparent with no sibilants (despite that titanium) and good stereo imaging was evident. The limited movie time I had showed the headphones capable of an excellent soundstage, but in truth I’d need to sit with full length movies to give my full verdict here. One thing is clear, they sound damn good. Volume is controlled via a neat dial on the right

This is a prattle device of course, so what of battery life. The eventual target is to run for 3 hours on a single charge, that’s in AV mode. Enough for a movie or a decent gaming session for sure, albeit falling some way of the requirements of long distant travellers for sure.

Gaming and What’s Next for Glyph

The Glyph includes an accelerometer based head tracking unit for the purposes of providing possible input to attached mobile devices. It employs Bluetooth 4 to pair with and exchange data. The Glyph isn’t being designed as a gaming headset, but the team felt strongly that giving developers the ability to customise or develop games that work with the HMD was important. It certainly isn’t the team’s primary focus however.

Avegant are gearing up for a Kickstarter campaign due to kick off January 22nd. The Glyph is being pitched at $499 per unit, but neither reward tiers or a target amount for the campaign have yet been decided. On the subject of a future versions of the Glyph with either an increased resolution or an increased FOV, ultimately targeted at Virtual Reality, the team remain open minded.

The Glyph is an intriguing package with a dazzling display and top tier audio capabilities. Avegant are working very hard to ensure that bleeding edge design can work effectively in reality and have their eye on the desirability factor that makes consumer electronics. It’ll be intriguing to see how the Kickstarter fairs with the unit at that price point and beyond how the general public receive such a unique product. We wish Avagent the best of luck with the project.

We’ll also have an interview with the team up for you soon.

The post CES 2014: Avegant Glyph Prototype Hands On appeared first on Road to Virtual Reality.

It finally happened, WIRED have published details on the new Oculus Rift prototype, codenamed ‘Crystal Cove’ with positional tracking and a brand new AMOLED panel.

The Real Next Gen

After what seems like forever spent speculating on just when the next version of the Oculus Rift would look like and what features it would carry, Wired.com were the lucky ones to get their hands on Oculus VR’s next generation HMD. Recently Road to VR spotted what we now know as ‘Crystal Cove’ hiding in an image used in an article by Wired based around a recent visit to Oculus VR HQ. Seems we were reasonably accurate as today, WIRED released details confirming our findings.

So, what is Crystal Cove and how does it improve upon previous prototypes?

First up is that positional tracking we and the community agonised over recently. As suspected, the system uses multiple LEDs and an IR tracking camera to gauge the translational position of the headset in 3D space. Up to now of course, you’ve only had orientation based tracking. The new system is hoped to help enormously with one of the Development Kits major drawbacks, nausea caused by the disconnect between what you saw in the game and your head movements. This is of course should allow the player to feel much more like they occupy a virtual space rather than a spectator in it. Actions such as leaning around corners, crouching etc. should now be possible.

The system Oculus have opted for bears some resemblance to a concept featured on Road to VR a little while back. The PosiTTron optical tracking system which was designed by Jordi Batallé. See the original demonstration video for this below:

Finally, Crystal Cove includes a low latency AMOLED panel in place of the old LCD panel which was plagued by motion blur and another contributor towards motion blur. This is one of the weapons in Oculus VR’s war on latency, the enemy of immersion. By reducing the latency of another component in the pipeline they’re edging the experience ever closer to the feeling of ‘being there’ and their target of < 20ms responsiveness (even less if Palmer and Carmack get their way).

WIRED also reports news of a new demo from EPIC based on the Unreal Engine 4 engine, similar to that which Oculus has used in demos for its previous 1080p based prototypes units seen at game and trade shows over the last 12 months. It’s presumed (by us) that the demo includes support for translation / positional tracking in order to show of the new prototype’s capabilities.

As to how closely the new prototype matches the capabilities of the long awaited commercial edition of the Oculus Rift (aka CK1) is anyone’s guess, but it does seem plausible that we’ll see both technologies in the final headset come Q3 this year.

We’re meeting with Oculus on Thursday and are very much crossing our fingers that Crystal Cove will be on hand to try. We’ll of course update you with our findings as soon as we can.

UPDATE: Seems hands-on impressions are flooding in from all over the web as Oculus VR kicks off with demos today. An image on Gizmodo’s website does a nice job of summarising the capabilities of the new tracking system.

The post CES 2014: New Oculus Rift ‘Crystal Cove’ Prototype Revealed with Positional Tracking, AMOLED Screen appeared first on Road to Virtual Reality.

During a packed CES 2014 schedule, CEO of Avegant, Edward Tang and COO Yobie Benjamin take some time to talk to Paul James about Avegant’s history and how the Glyph HMD came to be.

Calm Before the Kickstarter Storm

Ed Tang wasn’t ready to talk Kickstarter details when we met. Other than the start date, either they simply hadn’t decided or wanted the campaign details to remain a surprise. In either case, I wonder if the team imagined how quickly the crowd funding campaign would reach and pass their goal only hours after launching.

Probably not, but after spending some time with them, it’s hard not to sense their confidence. Dr. Allen Evans, Avegant CTO and inventor of the display and optical assembly they’re calling “Virtual Retinal Display”, along with CEO Ed Tang to jack in their jobs and throw themselves headlong into making their idea of a portable device capable of HD, Stereoscopic 3D video a reality. Whether or not the tech fits the previous definition of  ’VRD’ is up for debate, what’s not is that the display looks great in use.

Aside from their current focus on personal entertainment with the Glyph, they also share their experiences and thoughts on how their technology might be used in other areas outside this realm – including a surprising story demonstrating the unit’s unique display.

As of writing, the Avegant Glyph Kickstarter has climbed to almost $750,000 with 24 days still left to run. This means 100s of lucky people will be receiving the next revision (termed ‘Kickstarter beta’) of the Glyph this Fall.

We’re grateful to Ed and Yobie for making time to speak to us, and we’ll continue to chart that Kickstarter total as it continues to grow. Enjoy the video.

The post Avegant’s Ed Tang and Yobie Benjamin Talk About Their Journey to Kickstarting the Glyph at CES 2014 (Interview) appeared first on Road to Virtual Reality.

PS4 Oculus Rift concept by T3

The existence of a virtual reality headset from Sony for their PS4 console has passed well beyond idle speculation over the past 12 months. We bring you new information from a PS4 developer.

Note: This article contains speculation based on information from sources which cannot be officially verified.

Sony, No Stranger to HMDs

The Sony Glasstron PLM-50

Sony have been at the forefront of wearable entertainment technology since the the days of the Walkman and since have pioneered niche products such as the Glasstron and the HMZ line of personal movie viewers. One thing’s for sure, not only do Sony believe in the HMD as a concept, they’ve now amassed years of experience in both miniaturised displays, optics, and ergonomics as a result. If there’s one blue chip company out there that’s best placed to challenge Oculus VR in the immersive VR gaming space, it’s probably Sony.

We’ve been charting the building evidence for Sony’s plans to enter the virtual reality arena for months now. But things started to heat up in the run up to the Gamescom conference last year. Before I headed to the show to cover the event for Road to VR, we received a message from one of our anonymous tipsters saying simply this: “Keep an eye on Sony.” We heeded the advice and watched developments from Sony unfold at Gamescom like hawks but alas, nothing official, just a fresh set of rumours.

Come September, the big media outlets were all spouting the same speculation, this time however there was a level of confidence that doesn’t usually accompany such headlines. Chief among them was Games Industry’s forthright piece entitled “Inside PS4′s new VR headset” in which it stated that there was indeed a headset and that:

Sony HMZ-T3W

The headset (which is not tied to the company’s existing Wearable HDTV Personal 3D Viewer, pictured above) uses the PS4′s PlayStation Eye camera, like Move did, for head tracking. This, say people who have used it, makes the headset even more accurate than the Oculus Rift – though it does present some aesthetic challenges.

At present, the working prototype for the headset, which select developers currently have in house, looks much like Oculus’ better-known VR system – with ping pong balls attached. The design is not expected to be final.

It seemed to us that it wouldn’t be long until we finally had confirmation or perhaps even a reveal by Sony that this seemingly ‘all but confirmed’ headset did indeed exist and when we could expect it. But, things went quiet again, at least unit now.

“Sony’s PS4 VR Headset As Impressive As Valve’s”

Sony PS4 Camera

We’ve now received word from someone claiming to not only have tried Sony’s secretive virtual reality hardware but is actively developing software to utilise the device. Our source describes the HMD as having an FOV comparable to that of the Oculus Rift DK1 but with a much higher resolution. Further, the prototype our source had extensive time with, used two glowing orbs mounted atop the headset. Using a camera, assumed at this point to be the standard PS4 stereo camera that launched alongside the console late last year, the system tracks the user’s head in 3D space using the orbs to pinpoint position. Currently we have no information as to how head orientation is tracked, but it would make sense for Sony to include a solution similar to the Oculus Rift headtracker (IMU).

Sony PS Move Controller

Perhaps more interestingly, though, is that our developer source claims also to have attended the recent Steam Dev Days event in Seattle and sampled Valve’s apparently impressive prototype VR headset. According to the source, the two HMDs compare very favourably. The general impression was that resolution was comparable between Sony’s and Valve’s unit (reported to use two 1080p panels) and that head tracking accuracy was very close.

Finally, the developer also tells us that Sony’s VR headset was supposed to be revealed already but that technical issues delayed the announcement. What those issues were, we do not know.

Wild Speculation

If we hadn’t already made it abundantly clear already, this information is unconfirmed and in no way delivered via official sources. It must all be treated as wild speculation until such time as Sony decides to reveal their plans to enter the virtual reality arena. However, the information does tally with details leaked to other sources and the technology, albeit based on scant details, seems at least technically plausible.

Sony’s Playstation Move was a technically excellent ‘natural input’ controller which suffered horribly from lack of developer support (both first and third party). The ‘Glowing orb’ technology first debuted with this device and a version has found its way into the Dual Shock 4 controller, shipping with every Playstation 4 console. Each active PS4 controller has a glowing strip that faces the player’s screen and camera (if owned), the strip can be used for some reasonably accurate tracking of the controller’s position. Such technology has already been used by the Project Holodeck team to provide tracking references for their prototype HMDs.

Sony’s Playstation Move was a technically excellent ‘natural input’ controller which suffered horribly from lack of developer support (both first and third party).

In all honestly, my concern isn’t the execution of the hardware; Sony has good track records in producing superlative industrial design wrapping innovative technology. My biggest concern is that Sony will use this new device purely as a differentiator in the now ‘current gen’ console race. The PS4 and Xbox One offer such similar experiences, most of which I consider evolutionary—the chance for either to make their system stand out to gamers at large is incredibly valuable.

Whether the PS4 can offer the kind of processing grunt requires to push high resolution, high fidelity, stereoscopic scenes around at frame rates exceeding 60FPS is another question, and perhaps the biggest obstacle to Sony in this venture. As of writing, the AMD based APU in the PS4 offers performance comparable to that of current mid-range PCs—although a single hardware platform affords benefits which inflate its potential—in PC terms the PS4 is already behind the curve in terms of performance. And despite an encouraging trend for games to target a 1080p resolution, frame rates are another matter. Killzone Shadow Fall (PS4, 2013) looks fantastic, but runs at a locked 30FPS, way below the minimum threshold of 60 FPS recommended by Oculus VR Inc for a comfortable VR experience. If PS4 developers are to offer high frame rate, high resolution visuals, it’s clear something’s got to give, and that’s fidelity. Will gamers accept titles sacrificing their cosmetic looks for more immersive delivery?

Sony’s Potential VR Legacy

Here’s the rub though, virtual reality cannot be treated as an add-on or a peripheral. It must be treated as a platform in its own right. Software needs to be conceived, designed, and built from the ground up for the realm of VR, and cannot be tacked onto a renowned franchise as an afterthought. In this respect, Sony’s attempt at VR may well prove damaging to Oculus’ attempt to ensure virtual reality reaches escape velocity. If a company, with as much market reach as Sony, fumbles an entry into VR, it could sour the taste of this revolutionary gaming experience for an entire generation of gamers. And if Sony launch the device before Oculus can come to market, the average Joe may well try this half-hearted, rushed implementation and be put off for another decade.

“…Sony’s attempt at VR may well prove damaging to Oculus’ attempt to ensure virtual reality reaches escape velocity”

This is of course a slightly pessimistic and overly-dramatic scenario, but one that has a very real possibility of coming to pass. Whilst the Games Industry article above does give some encouragement that Sony’s VR venture will not meet the same fate as the PS Move controller, it’s clear the PS4 is a traditional console first and potential platform for virtual reality a very distant second.

As I was writing this article, yet more evidence of the existence of a Sony PS4 VR headset emerged. John Smedley, President of SOE (Sony Online Entertainment), the first party studio behind the likes of the next generation MMO EverQuest Next, appeared to hint at the existence of such a device in a recent Reddit AMAA:

hearing good things about 2 competitors.. one of which actually comes from Sony. so I’m thinking this is real and we may have our Snowcrash after all.

Snow Crash referring to Neal Stephenson’s influential 1992 novel which explores the idea of a virtual reality metaverse.

With any luck John isn’t referring to the dismal HMZ-TQ3, demoed at this year’s CES and was received poorly by those VR enthusiasts that tried it, but to a real dedicated HMD for gamers.

We shall see. As we continue to state, possibly ad-nauseum at this point, 2014 will be a very interesting year for VR.

—

What do you think? Is there now enough speculation and rumour to convince you such an HMD exists? Could Sony do more harm than good by entering the VR arena? Or do you think Sony can bring an important device to the table and help virtual reality enter the public consciousness more quickly? Let us know in the comments below.

Finally, many thanks to our tipster. You know who you are.

The post “Sony’s PS4 VR Headset Is as Impressive as Valve’s” Says Developer—Can Sony Deliver VR That Gamers Deserve? appeared first on Road to Virtual Reality.

Sensics has just released details of their new Panoramic VR Headset which suports an as yet unrivalled resolution of 1080p per eye! We take a look a the specs.

A New Challenger Has Entered the Game, the dSight 2x1080p

Looks like the year of virtual reality really is gaining momentum. We’ve been covering Sensics for quite some time now, it’s fair to say the company is a veteran of the Business / Prosumer HMD market.

Back in March last year, Ben spoke to Sensics CEO Yuval Boger who was philosophical in the face of a renewed consumer interest in virtual reality, ignited by the Oculus Rift. Well it looks as if the company have been working hard to capture some of that market as they’ve just released specs of their new VR Headset, the dSight 2x1080p flat-panel HMD.

The unit sports two Full HD (1080p) TFT Panels, which means the HMD is currently unrivalled in terms of raw resolution. By contrast, the current Oculus Rift DK1 offers only 1280×800 for both eyes. Not only that though, Sensics claim the unit has an Oculus Rift beating 131 degree field of view, meaning your peripheral vision is being treated to extra image both horizontally and vertically. On top of that, Sensics claim it’s ‘Designer Optics’ require no pre-warping or distortion filters as it’s lenses leave the source image largely distortion free.

In reality, the unit has more in common with the InfinitEye prototype VR Headset I tried last year, dual HDMI inputs and a fairly bulky enclosure (side effects of so much panel acreage) – that unit boasted onlt 1280×800 per eye but a staggering 210 degree FOV – and was a sight to behold.

Interestingly though, among the options available to prospective purchasers are, “Video-based augmented reality, Eye Tracking and Hand / Finger tracking” – which is an interesting wishlist for sure. It’s not clear how quickly either the dSight or those optional extras might be available to buy however. Watch this space for more.

We’ll be trying to get our hands on the unit as soon as we can to bring you some hands on impressions ASAP.

Full Specs:

The post GDC 2014: Sensics Release Dual 1080p Screen ‘Panoramic’ VR Headset appeared first on Road to Virtual Reality.

Hands on with the future of PS4 Gaming

Our roving report Ben Lang is on the show floor at GDC 2014 and has sent back a hands-on playtest with Sony’s new prototype VR Heedset, codenamed Project Morpheus.

The post GDC 2014: Sony Project Morpheus PS4 VR Headset ‘The Deep’ Gameplay Video appeared first on Road to Virtual Reality.

As part of continuing GDC 2014 coverage, Cymatic Bruce and myself had our first opportunity to experience Sony’s new Project Morpheus, the PS4 VR dev kit, earlier today.

How Does it Feel to Wear?

Brian: I found it a little awkward to figure out how it fits on your head. The design of it looks very well polished, but it’s a little less intuitive to place onto your head than the Oculus Rift, and it’s less obvious how to make adjustments for fit. The Sony rep giving the demo worked with me to achieve a comfortable fit. Since the Sony Morpheus sort of sits on top of your head instead of being strapped on, I did have the impression a few times that it might fall off, but that was unfounded as it stayed securely in place once I started whipping my head around.

Bruce: Comfortable in some ways, uncomfortable in others. Overall the unit was less stifling than the Rift, with more airflow around the face. The sweet spot seemed to be quite loose (which is a good thing), however after several minutes of play, near the end of the second demo (Eve: Valkyrie), it was definitely bearing down on my glasses, causing pain on the bridge of my nose. I’m not sure if it was a design issue or an adjustment issue.

What Were the Demos?

Brian: Two demo experiences were shown today. The first, called The Deep, puts you underwater in a shark cage, which is similar to the Game of Thrones experience put on recently at SXSW in Austin in that they both take place in confined spaces, so they don’t have to account for player movement. As an experience, it was ok. The game itself was well done, and the shark looked amazing, but I think I was just looking for a different kind of experience… which I definitely got in the second demo, the unreleased-but-already-famous Eve: Valkyrie. I won’t review the game here, but it’s a terrific game in its own right right, and a great showcase of Morpheus’ strengths. Eve offers the same advantage as The Deep in that you’re sitting in a cockpit, a confined space.

Bruce: Both demos were solid. The first demo, The Deep, was definitely playing to the strengths of the hardware. It was passive; not much to do but experience it. I can understand their choice of demo given the type of consumer they’re targeting. Eve was great as always but seemed to be missing some graphics components that were in the Oculus Rift version. The targeting reticle was simplified and there were some panels missing from the cockpit.

How is the Hardware?

Brian: Positional tracking didn’t work at the beginning of my demo of The Deep, but the rep made some adjustments and it started. After that, I was able to look down and see my knees, and when I bent down in real life, I could see my avatar’s knees bend and I crouched closer to the bottom of the cage. I was also able to pitch forward and my torso would move closer to the edge of the cage. In Eve, I was able to lean forward to look more closely at the cockpit, and, hilariously, was able to detach my head from my torso from leaning way back.

The image quality was, frankly, stunning. As mentioned, the games themselves are very well done, and I had to concentrate hard to break the illusion and try to see individual pixels, and this is with me whipping my head around like a crazy person trying to make the image skip or blur.

I did experience slight disorientation in Eve, and it was only in certain cases where a ship was passing very close to me at a high rate of speed. Even now I’m not able to put my finger on what the issue was, but I felt ‘unsettled’ somehow by something I couldn’t consciously perceive. It would be interesting to record that at a high frame rate and play it back to see if there’s something going on.

Bruce: The positional tracking was solid for the most part. I did encounter occasional hiccups and jumps in my position, but when it worked, it worked very well. I would say the DK2 still has more precise positioning. The controller tracking was also very good in the The Deep demo. The controller only rotated the hand; the arm’s position wasn’t tracked. It was kind of cool that the crouching made the avatar crouch.

The screen was very clear, with the screen door effect hardly noticeable. There was still quite a bit of motion blur with rapid head movement, especially with the neon lettering in Eve Valkyrie.

Road to VR has been invited back tomorrow for two new experiences. Please respond with what else you’d like to know in the comments, and we’ll try to address them in tomorrow’s demo.

The post GDC 2014: Hands-on with Sony’s Project Morpheus VR Headset appeared first on Road to Virtual Reality.

Sony Computer Entertainment surprised last evening’s Silicon Valley VR meetup #10 with the first public display of their Project Morpheus VR headset prototype.

Anton Mikhailov, Jeff Stafford and Frederick Umminger, from Sony’s Project Morpheus Team

Morpheus, unveiled at this year’s Game Developers Conference in March, was only shown to a limited audience of conference attendees and press at that event. Earlier this week it was on display at a small, invite-only event for developers in Europe. Last night was the first opportunity the public had to freely experience the prototype. Project team members Jeff Stafford, Frederick Umminger, and Anton Mikhailov were on hand at SVVR to show off the Morpheus hardware and their Castle demo.

Players received a head-mounted display, stereo headphones (which plug into the HMD), and a pair of Playstation Move controllers.

The game takes place in a medieval courtyard, with a ragdoll dummy in front of you, and several sharp weapons nearby. Pulling the trigger buttons on the controllers balls your hand into a fist. Instructions are mostly unnecessary: take out your aggression on the dummies in front of you using fists or swords. Cutting the dummy’s hand off and then slapping them across the face is easy, fun and satisfying. The level of interaction the Move controllers adds lots of depth to the experience.

Much like at GDC, interested players raced to queue up as soon as the demo opened, and despite a long line lasting most of the night, nobody seemed to mind. Feedback from those that tried it was positive, with most saying it was better than expected. Having your hands in the game takes the experience to a whole new — and satisfying — level.

Music video and commercial director Jonnie Ross, a co-founder of Virtual Reality LA who drove up from Los Angeles for the SVVR meetup, shared his thoughts:

As far as gameplay, this video shows up-close game action using the “social screen” that shows non-players an unwarped view of the action:

In another video, attendee Jacob Rangel demonstrates some of the play mechanics, including a dual-wield head chop:

And Scott Broock from Jaunt VR shows off his moves:

Many thanks to Sony Computer Entertainment for sharing with SVVR this evening, and to Jeff Stafford, Frederick Umminger, and Anton Mikhailov for working the extra hours to bring it to us. I expect there are at least a few people who updated their VR wishlists after tonight.

Don’t forget, you can still grab tickets to the forthcoming SVVR Conference and Expo in May and there’s a $100 discount available for Road to VR readers. Check out this article for more details on how.

The post Sony Morpheus VR Headset Shown in Public for First Time at SVVR Meetup #10 appeared first on Road to Virtual Reality.

The newest entrant into the VR Headset space, AntVR and their ‘Universal, all-in-one’ wireless VR System, has caused some confusion and controversy among those in the VR community. So, we thought we’d give the new company the chance to answer their critics.

AntVR Kickstarter Causes Confusion

We had a brief look at the new AntVR ‘Universal’ all-in-one VR system a few days ago. The new company, based in Beijing, has since launched their Kickstarter campaign and with it a slew of technical specifications for the system. However, some of the claims made have caused scepticism in the VR community, somewhat understandably.

The campaign has already raised a staggering $122k as of writing and it seems clear they’ll pass their $200k goal with ease. But there are some real gaps in the technical information supplied on the Kickstarter page which have caused concern in the community. Some of the claims can perhaps be attributed to translation difficulties, but some appear purely misinformed. Just a couple of examples from their Kickstarter FAQ:

What are the differences between spherical and aspherical lens? Why do you use aspherical lens?

Generally, aspherical lens has two advantages over spherical lens. First of all, with spherical lens, standard images would look distorted if not specifically designed to work with a spherical lens. But aspherical lens is compatible with any standard image.

Whilst it’s technically true aspherical lenses aren’t spherical (this one’s somewhat of a no brainer), suggesting that they cause no distortion is incorrect. The Oculus Rift also uses aspherical lenses and any image presented to the device requires pre-warping to compensate for distortion caused when passing through the lenses. No mention of chromatic aberration either here, also requiring compensation correction at the rendering stage.

Do you have a screen door problem?

Because we use aspherical lenses and never waste any pixels in the full HD screen, it will be crystal clear in the headset. There’s no screen door problem.

Screen door is of course the visibility of the display panel’s structure, in particular the gaps between pixels. The team claim to use a single 1080p LCD panel (960 x 1080 per eye) with a 100 degree FOV, so it’s not clear how their claim of ‘no screen door’ can be substantiated. The FOV is all-important here. If they’re suggesting that they’re achieving a 100 degree horizontal true FOV, then loss of pixels is inevitable.

Finally, the comparison table used to stack AntVR’s system up against its competitors is simply inaccurate. The Oculus Rift DK2 uses a 5 inch panel, aspheric lenses and does away with the breakout ‘driver’ box. It would have to be said that merely stating ‘Built-in’ to describe AntVRs positional tracking system is somewhat unhelpful.

We Need Your Questions!

So, we want to help clear up some of the confusion but we need your help. What would you like to ask the makers of AntVR? CEO of AntVR Qin Zheng has agreed to answer your questions. Reply in the comments (or head over to the thread at /r/oculus) below this article and we’ll collate then send them over and of course report back once we’ve receive some answers.

The post AntVR ‘Universal’ VR Headset Kickstarter Proves Controversial – What Would You Like To Know? appeared first on Road to Virtual Reality.

The team behind Project Holodeck has announced that it has secured $4 million in venture funding to help them build their immersive VR experience.

Project Holodeck – From University Project To Investment Opportunity

Nathan Burba, CEO of Survios with an early version of Project Holodecks hardware

We’ve been following Survios (or Project Holodeck as they used to be called) for some time now. Ben Lang stepped into the Holodeck back in February of last year (see video above) at the dawn of the current VR resurgence and we later broke news of their Razer Hydra and Oculus Rift enabled experience, Zombies on the Holodeck.

The original Project Holodeck idea has its roots in an experiment that began at USC in their Mixed Reality Lab. One of their peers was none other than Palmer Luckey, Founder of Oculus VR. In fact, early Project Holodeck iterations included an early prototype HMD similar in design to the Oculus Rift. As you can see from the above video, the system resembled a mad scientist’s hobby project. It leveraged technology from the Razer Hydra motion controllers (for user input) to Sony’s Move controller, used ostensibly to allow tracking of the player 3D space – both of which mounted precariously atop a wobbly looking helmet. It looked crazy, but to quote Ben from his time in that early version:

I was so immersed that at one point I needed to set the Razer Hydra controllers down to adjust my helmet and I nearly tried to set them down on a virtual table next to me. There was no table in real life — had I not quickly realized what I was about to do, I would have dropped the controllers straight onto the floor below. 

Survios are an interesting proposition for funding as they are working to produce both a hardware solution and compelling software to leverage that hardware. What’s more, despite their relative youth as a company, they can claim to have spent more time than most trying to solve technical and creative problems thrown up by virtual reality.

The money raising has been led by Shasta Ventures, a company that labels itself as a “boutique, early stage venture firm”. Shasta partner said of the young startup “Survios is hands down the best at what they do. The team is young, hungry, and extremely talented, and they have solved some tremendously important challenges that will enable the entire VR industry to evolve.”

We’re thrilled to see such James Illif (CCO) and Nathan Burba (CEO) achieve so much in such a short time. Writing for Road to VR at times feels very much like documenting the beginning of VR history. Like Palmer Luckey and his Oculus Rift, Project Holodeck is another project in the VR space that started with nothing but makeshift prototypes and a real passion for what they believe in and have now attracted the attention from the business world. Many will say this is the Facebook effect, and to some extent that’s true, but we think it’s more that the world is finally waking up to the fact that not only is VR here to stay, it’s going to change everything. And there’s a lot of money in everything.

The post Survios Announces $4 Million in Venture Funding for VR Projects appeared first on Road to Virtual Reality.

The ImmersiON ‘Pro’ VR Headset

VRelia, a Spanish company recently formed with the aim of providing users with high resolution VR Headsets, has announced a partnership with ImmersiON, a startup formed from the key players behind TD Vision, a company with a history in 3D technologies and video codecs.

We first covered VRelia back in February, at which time they were planning to offer not one but three different VR headsets to compete directly with Oculus VR’s Rift. Since then, it looks like the company has returned to the drawing board and has now paired down it’s offering count to 2. The VREye Go, a headset smartphone harness much like that which we’ve seen from vRase, Durovis and countless others. The VREye Pro offers what’s claimed to be 2 x 5.9″ Full HD (1080p) display panels which the company claims delivers an effective resolution of 2190 x 1920, a slightly confusing figure given that 2 x 1080 (vertical resolution of a full HD panel) = 2160.

The VRelia VREye ‘Go’ mobile phone VR Headset

The products sold by ImmersiON share the same base specs as above and adds what looks to be dual front facing cameras in order to facilitate augmented reality experiences. It’s also key to point out that the images of all these HMDs are at this stage merely renders, and that should you choose to opt for pre-ordering one of the ImmersiON devices, you’re also opting in to beta test early versions of the new VR headsets as it seems there’s no final hardware as yet not to mention a complete absence of pricing. Furthermore, there’s no clear indication when those placing their orders might receive actual hardware.

TDVision seems to have had their hand in many technologies over the years, including the production of their own VR Headset, the TD Visor. It’s their software platform called AlterSpace which is highlighted in a recent press release announcing the partnership though and this seems to take the form of an online collaboration, chat and social VR hub where people can hang out in VR, share online content and socialise. Beyond that, it’s not too clear how the software plays a part in pushing the VREye headsets, or even if / when it will be made available – the Alterspace website seems completely unfinished and the only documentation I could find on TDVision’s website seemed to describe concepts and planned features only.

Competition is great, on that we can all agree. But right now it’s simply unclear precisely what this announcement means for the VR Industry. With hardware that’s yet to enter the beta stage and an unclear roadmap for ImmersiON’s value added software packages, we’ll just have to wait and see.

The post VRelia Partners with ImmersiON to Offer VR Headsets and Content appeared first on Road to Virtual Reality.

InfinitEye is a head mounted display prototype with a whopping 210 degree horizontal field of view that’s on a similar trajectory as the Oculus Rift; the prototype was conceived and constructed by a group of VR enthusiasts who are looking to bring it to production. The team is competing for €100,000 in funding and guidance to make their prototype a reality — your vote is all it takes!

Though Palmer Luckey has previously put together 120 degree and 270 degree HMD prototypes, InfinitEye’s achievement is that it could be small and light enough to be worn directly on the head with no additional mounting while still bringing a huge field of view and high resolution to the table.

The current prototype uses two displays to achieve its massive field view. Normally with dual displays you’d need complicated optics to properly align the images with the eyes; InfinitEye is using Fresnel lenses to do so simply and without adding much weight. In fact, the current InfinitEye prototype weighs less than the Oculus Rift (but keep in mind that it is currently made from much less durable material for the sake of rapid prototyping):

There are some concerns with the use of dual displays and Fresnel lenses; chief among them being distortion, clarity, and diagonal alignment. The creators of InftinitEye say that there’s no issue with focus or distortion using the lenses.

With some initial skepticism, VR Enthusiast and MTBS3D user TheLostBrain bought the same lenses used in the prototype to see for himself.

“First things first – I DO stand corrected… I now believe that Fresnels CAN produce a sharp, quality image in an HMD!” he wrote in a post on MTBS3D:

I honestly had my reservations when I ordered these because of the experience I’ve had in the past w/ Fresnel lenses. Generally the ones I’ve worked with offered not much more than a muddy, washed-out view. I’m happy to say these are the exact opposite!

I’d even go as far as to say that when looking through ONE of them at my monitor (positioned ~120mm FL, Fresnel grooves towards the screen)… I can absolutely not tell that I’m looking through a Fresnel vs any other decent quality large acrylic optic. There’s no perception of the Fresnel grooves, etc. at all!

Now, upon adding the second lens things do degrade just a bit. A bit of contrast is lost, a tiny bit of lens smear is detectable on high-contrast scenes, and all of the applicable aberrations are more prevalent. However, much of this is to be expected w/ any type of uncorrected lens assembly.

Also I would like to point out (as Palmer, GeekMaster and others on this thread already have) that Fresnels are are by no means a magic bullet and you will still have to work within the same constraints that apply to standard plano convex lenses. Ex: You still have spherical, chromatic, field curvature, etc. taking shots at your view so you’ll have to do your best to compensate as usual.

With all that said I’m still 100% confident that these lenses do offer some excellent advantages for HMD design where immersive FOV is the primary goal.

• Huge immediate-FOV combined with a very generous eye-relief.
• Full eyeglass compatibility do to that eye-relief.
• Huge reduction in weight vs a comparable system using standard lenses
• Huge reduction in cost vs a comparable system using standard lenses

Palmer Luckey, in a thread on Reddit, notes that “The artifacts of fresnel lenses are not as bad as they used to be, and might look fine on some LCDs, but you can definitely see a significant degradation in quality with high quality/high contrast displays.”

Even so, he remains excited at the prospect of the design and even offered assistance, “It would be very cool if the potential problems are as well solved as you say! We have a lot of optical test gear in the lab, if you want objective distortion/focus measurements, I would be glad to help.”

The dual displays also offer an opportunity to increase resolution over a single-screen head mounted display like the Oculus Rift. While the Rift splits its single 1280×800 display in half, resulting in 640×800 per eye, InfinitEye uses one display per eye — each eye gets the full resolution. Currently the prototype has a resolution of 1280×800 per eye, though this is counterbalanced by being stretched over a field of view almost twice that of the Oculus Rift’s:

The InfinitEye team says they’re aiming for higher resolution panels as development progresses.

There are still challenges to be solved for the InfinitEye design. For one, the team would like to make a custom control board to drive each display in sync, ideally with a single video input. Currently it seems that each display has its own control board and input, adding to weight and complexity. The team would also like to create a custom headtracking solution in place of the current YEI trackers that they’re using.

InfinitEye Competing for €100,000 in Funding and Entrepreneurial Guidance, 4 Days Left to Vote!

Though the Oculus Rift and InfinitEye both began their journey at MTBS3D, InfinitEye is taking a path other than Kickstarter (for now, perhaps). The team has entered their design into an entrepreneurship contest sponsored by Samsung. The prize is €100,000 in funding to continue the project and also the guidance of an independent entrepreneur who will help make their vision a reality.

You can help InfinitEye secure their funding and entrepreneurial support simply by voting for their project in the contest. The contest is in French, but the InfinitEye team says that international votes are welcome.

Vote for InftinitEye in the Funding Contest

Here’s how to vote:

4. Give the app permission to cast your vote. Don’t worry about the dialogue box that pops up at the end asking for an email address, that’s for a raffle.

My vote is cast!

The InfinitEye Team

I spoke with InfinitEye design Lionel Anton to learn more about the team working on this exciting HMD. Here’s his breakdown:

Lionel Anton, 30 years old. I’m a software engineer specialized in image processing but since always I’ve been tinkering with various hardware projects. I guess the thing that got me into VR is when I started a DIY projector back in 2006, I bought an old projector in which I found an aspheric lens for light collimation and seeing how close I could make focus on objects, I immediately thought about making a 3D display with a screen near my face and two of these lenses, a wide FOV 3D HMD. But at that time, I had other projects and this was only an idea in my mind. Then in winter 2010 I finally got the time to re-think about this and I made a post on MTBS3D in august 2011 to present the concept (http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=13659, it was the first project there that was using one screen with 2 lenses). Then I let it into oblivion until last year when I saw how successful the Rift campaign was and how much people were interested in VR. I knew that I could design something with a much wider field of view, and I started to work on a dual screen concept. I made a thread on MTBS3D in February to show the project and since then I’ve continued to improve the design.

Stephane Portes, 30 years old. He’s a friend I’ve known for 17 years. He’s the one who saw the potential of the concept and pushed me to make something with it. Also, he’s passionate about IT technologies and Virtual Realities. He has a strong technical background in IT and works as an international IS project manager for a famous aircraft manufacturing company on behalf of an IT Services company. Therefore he’s very skilled in management, marketing and communication an joined the project to take care of all these aspects, including the participation to the Samsung contest.

Robin Bourianes, 30 years old. I’ve known Robin for 13 years, we share the same education at the University of Toulouse in AI, robotics, VR (mainly 3D programming), image processing and computer science engineering. He’s a talented 3D expert, software architect and engineer and he joined the team a few months ago as the main developer. He developed the 3D engine and all the specialized warping stuff we used for the demo in which he integrated the Oculus VR Tuscany environment.

We’ll be continuing to watch the InfinitEye project closely — best of luck to these three!

The post 4 Days Left to Help InfinitEye 210 Degree HMD Prototype Win €100,000 in Funding appeared first on Road to VR.

I’m heading to Toulouse, France to meet the InfinitEye team and try out their latest prototype. What would you like to know about it and what would you ask the team?

Europe’s Answer to the Oculus Rift?

Stephane, Lionel and Robin, the men that make up Team InfinitEye have very kindly agreed to meet up with me and showcase the HMD that cause quite a stir when news of it’s 210 degree FOV emerged back in August. It’s distinct approach to the problem if high FOV stereoscopy, using twin 7″ LCD Panels and canted Fresnel lenses produces a staggeringly immersive FOV whilst maintaining a higher ‘pixel per eye’ count than the Oculus Rift. Exciting stuff.

I got in touch with Stephane and asked if the team were interested in showcasing their work and speaking to Road to VR and happily they were. I’ll be flying out to Toulouse to spend the day with the team and the InfinitEye, so I wanted to ask you what you’d like to know about this mysterious but promising project.

Drop your burning queries in the comments below and I’ll do my best to get answers to them when I meet the team in a couple of weeks. Thanks in advance and stay tuned for the report.

The post InfinitEye: We’ll Be Meeting The Team and Going Hands-On. What Would You Like To Know? appeared first on Road to VR.

Rising like a prototypical phoenix from the ashes of a discarded Valve project comes CastAR. The worlds first projected AR and VR system has arrived at Kickstarter and is nearly fully funded after just two days.

CastARs Dramatic Journey

Many of you are probably familiar with the story of CastAR, at least superficially. It’s the story of talented individuals (Inventor / Product Engineer Jeri Ellsworth and Programmer Rick Johnson), passionate about a project initiated by the benevolent Valve Software – at the time searching for the ‘next big thing’ in gaming hardware – and that project’s premature axing and it’s teams untimely elimination.

However, the story doesn’t end there and in a typically Gaben-esque gesture, Valve gifted the prototype Intellectual Property to the team in order that they may continue it’s development independently.  Why did Valve lose faith in the project? Was it the appearance of the Oculus Rift, a fully formed project in Virtual Reality poised to explode onto the gaming scene? Valve’s enthusiastic embrace of the technology from the beginning might lead you to believe so. Perhaps we’ll never know and in truth it probably doesn’t matter any more. What does matter is that CastAR is finally ready to hit Kickstarter and allow the people decide if Valve has missed an opportunity in discarding it.

Just before the Kickstarter began, Jeri went into quite some detail on the events surrounding their dismissal from Valve in a video posted to her YouTube Channel. It illustrates the drive, passion and belief Jeri has for her creation:

Projected Augmented Reality: How it Works

CastAR is a ‘Projected Augmented Reality’ system which fuses multiple technologies to offer a pretty unique gaming experience. The user dons a set of lightweight glasses, housing LCD shutter panels. Mounted over each lens is a tiny micro LCD projector – one for each eye. The projectors cast dual images at 120Hz on a special retro-reflective surface. The LCD lenses, also operating at 120Hz, filter the projected images delivering stereoscopic pictures to your eyes. The effect is that of a solid holographic display, with images appearing to ‘exist’ within the plane of the reflective surface.  That’s a pretty impressive package right there, but CastAR goes even further.

The system allows the user to move around the projected image, leaning in and out of the scene with the image shifting to sell the illusion of an object existing in front of you. It achieves this by use of a centrally mounted camera (on the bridge of the glasses) and the use of a proprietary infra-red LED plate, placed alongside the retro-reflective playing surface. The camera reads the position, translation and orientation of the LEDs and extrapolates the users position in space relative to the image as well as the pitch, roll and yaw of the user’s head.

Finally, as the retro-reflective surface (similar to that used in road signs) doesn’t scatter light as most surfaces, only the user of the glasses sees the projected image. This means, more than one person can share the surface and share the same image but viewed from their perspective, under their control. Pretty cool stuff.

The VR Surprise

Up until now the project was believed to be exclusively Augmented Reality focussed, but just before the Kickstarter campaign began, the team revealed a surprise – a clip-on reflector system which bounces light from the integrated projectors back to your eyes and ‘voila!’ CastAR is now a Virtual Reality headset.

Peripherals

CastAR is clearly well suited for applications such as table top gaming. With this in mind, the team have also produced a complimentary set of peripherals to enhance the experience. AnLED tipped wand allowing the user to reach into the gameworld and RFID enabled ‘mats’ which sense objects with the appropriate electronic tags and their position on the surface – perfect for D&D style role playing games.

The Kickstarter

The company behind the project, Technical Illusions, has set a $400k goal for the campaign and at the time of writing (with 30 days left) it’s already over 80% funded. Clearly this campaign will be a success, just how enormous that success will be remains to be seen. The standard tiers, offering a range of packages for different needs are well judged. But in response to the positive initial surge of support, the team have released details of stretch goals including developing integrated earbuds and mics for the glasses.

It’s a promising project and the passion shown by Jeri and Rick, who’ve worked constantly since their Valve upset to refine their idea into a product that can fulfil their vision. We wish them the best of luck and very much look forward to seeing CastAR in action for ourselves.

Back the CastAR Kickstarter Here

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We’ll be speaking with Jeri and Rick towards the end of the Kickstarter campaign, stay tuned for the interview.

The post CastAR HMD Made by Former Valve Employees Offers AR and VR in One Compelling Package. Kickstarter Now Live! appeared first on Road to VR.

InfinitEye is a prototype head mounted display that uses dual 1280×800 displays to create a massive 210 degree field of view. I traveled to Toulouse, France to be the first journalist in the world to go hands-on with the unit. These are my thoughts on the trip, the team, and the HMD itself.

An Englishman in Toulouse

Take Me To the Videos

It’s been a little over 12 months since I began writing publicly about virtual reality and if you’d told me then that I’d be flying around Europe, getting to meet the leading lights in this fledgling industry and to witness the birth of so many incredible firsts along the way, I doubt I’d have believed you. Nevertheless, here I was winging my way to the historic city of Toulouse to met the talented trio behind what some believe is the first real competitor to the now mighty Oculus Rift.

If that all sounds a little too romantic, it is. In reality I was on a redeye, struggling to stay awake following a 6 hour drive and the world’s worst sleep ever. In a fit of unusual optimism (I’m British after all) I’d arranged to do the trip in one day, an itinerary I’ll not be trying to replicate any time in the near future.

Greeting me at the Airport was Project Manager Stephane Portes and Developer Lionel Anton, and upon seeing my zombie-esque condition, frankly they must have wondered what they’d agreed to. Nevertheless, a few minutes later we were chatting opposite the grandiose Capitole de Toulouse, sipping fresh orange juice. Joining us there was the third and (so far) final member of the team, Developer and ”3D Expert” Robin Bourianes. All three members have been friends for over a decade and this is not the first time they’ve collaborated on a project.

The InfinitEye was Lionel’s idea, a product of many hours of tinkering in his spare time. Stephane exclaims “I’ve been trying to push him [Lionel] for years”, highlighting his own personal belief that his friend was onto something rather special. By that of course he meant, refining the design, developing an SDK, seeking funding, and perhaps even investigate the possibilities of a commercial product based on the idea.

This brings us to juncture where most people first heard of the InfinitEye, at least those not frequenting specialist forums such as MTBS3D. The team entered a Samsung Entrepreneurial Funding Contest which promised €100,000 to the winner. Despite being publicly voted into the top five finalists, Samsung decided to not pick any of the finalists. As you can imagine, it knocked the wind out of their sails a little. But the campaign they ran in order to get the votes brought their project to the attention of many more people. The genie was out of the bottle.

“Natural and Panoramic Virtual Reality…”

…is the best phrase I can come up with that summarises the InfinitEye’s capabilities. If using the Oculus Rift is like opening the sunroof on a virtual world, the InfinitEye takes the roof clean off—at least if you base your opinion solely on horizontal FOV. But the new HMD also offers 1280×800 per eye in comparison the current Oculus Rift Dev Kit’s 640×800 (and only slightly fewer pixels per eye than the Oculus Rift HD prototype), the benefits of which should be obvious. What’s been more controversial is the use of Fresnel lenses to achieve the astronomical FOV. Rejected by some as problematic, the debate on whether they offer a viable alternative to Oculus Rift style aspheric lenses is complex, and we’ll be covering this in a forthcoming technical exploration including answers to your questions.

For now though, we present three videos filmed during my day with the InfinitEye team, each video is my realtime impressions whilst experiencing the application in question. The applications show a good range of the HMD’s abilities and I hope my slightly dazed ramblings give you some idea of what to expect should this device ever become a reality.

Continued: Video Impressions

The post Exclusive: World’s First Hands-On With the InfinitEye 210° FOV HMD [video] appeared first on Road to VR.