Oculus Inc is that CES 2013 this year and the Oculus Rift is getting plenty of attention. The company isn’t making any new announcements, though they are giving demos of the VR headset to press at CES. In this post I’ll be pointing you’ll find fresh interviews and hands-on demos that are coming out of CES 2013 this week.
At CES this week, Microsoft has revealed a research project called IllumiRoom. The system combines a Kinect with a projector to scan your TV room and show content that extends beyond your TV. The goal is to create a more immersive gaming experience by adding peripheral information. The IllumiRoom appears very similar to a patent application recently filed by Microsoft.
Here’s a neat video that the folks from Project Holodeck pointed out on their blog. Cara Santa Maria of the Huffington Post took a trip to the MxR (Mixed Reality) Lab at USC. Mark Bolas, the associate director for mixed reality research and development at ICT, walks Maria down a gravel path in virtual reality which seems to go on forever, even though they’ve only got a 20×20 foot space. How do they do it? Take a look:
Vuzix announced the M100 Smart Glasses back in November. The company is now shipping developer kits along with the SDK which was offered for $999 when the unit was first announced. Engadget also has a brand new hands-on video with the M100 at the CES 2013 exhibition which is happening right now!
Back in November I highlighted a cool music video for the song Sweater by Belgium-based band Willow. The video used a CAVE (Cave Automatic Virtual Environment) and a treadmill to allow the singer to stroll through live virtual environments as the video was being shot (more about CAVEs here). I thought this was a really neat merger of virtual reality technology and art, so I contact the director of the music video, Filip Sterckx, to learn more about his choice to use a CAVE.
One of the things that makes virtual reality so alluring is the immeasurable possibilities. With minimal hardware these days you can transport yourself to a virtual world where you could literally rewrite the laws of physics if you wanted to. Virtual reality and augmented reality are going to change life as we know it. Things that are happening today are going to ripple through time and powerfully affect the future.
I love to discuss/imagine/brainstorm about VR and AR for these reasons, and there’s no better way to do that than collaboratively. While this blog is a great way to keep people abreast of the latest interesting news, there’s lot’s of fascinating discussion that happens on the sidelines that everyone can participate in. With that said, I’ve started a Google+ community for VR and AR that I encourage you all to join and jump into the conversation of the future of these amazing technologies.
Join the discussion at the Google+ Community: ‘Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality’!
Here’s another cool Oculus Rift ‘fan ad’ by Andreas Aronsson (click to enlarge)! A bit wide for a two-page magazine spread, but still cool ; ). What do you think?
Project Holodeck is an effort out of USC to create a multiplayer virtual reality gaming platform that offers full avatar embodiment and immersive first-person gameplay. Some members of the Project Holodeck team made the lengthy trek from the States to Dublin, Ireland to showcase the project at the ‘Game: Next’ exhibition, a 4-day look at experimental gaming technology and the future of gaming, at the Science Gallery
A friend spotted someone wearing a prototype Google Glass HMD in New York City and shot me this photo. You can see that the Glass unit has prescription lenses, something that hasn’t been seen in public until now. This is one of several other styles that we’ve seen, including sunglasses and no lenses.
It’s interesting to see this in NYC; Project Glass is the creation of the company’s semi-secret ‘Google X Lab’ which is likely located close to Google headquarters in California. The company does have offices nationally (including New York) and internationally, but it is unknown if the company has distributed Google Glass prototypes outside of the Google X Lab.
Last week Palmer Luckey took the stage as a keynote speaker at Evolve 2012 in London. The conference is an “event exploring everything that’s cutting edge and innovative in game development – new platforms, new technologies, new business models and new markets.” Luckey, who is the founder of Oculus Inc. and inventor of the Oculus Rift HMD, had the headlining speech on virtual reality.
I just stumbled across this excellent video showing a brief history of virtual reality. The video is from the YouTube channel Silicon Classics. It focuses mainly on the Forte VFX1 head mounted display but also gives a great overview of many other products surrounding its release. Real modern footage of the Forte VFX1 in action shows just how far we’ve come since the 1990s virtual reality bubble.
Here’s something a bit different: a ‘fan ad’ I whipped up for the Oculus Rift head mounted display. This is just a concept that popped up while thinking about how Oculus Inc. might market the Oculus Rift 2.0 HMD (consumer version). What do you think?
Last month Sony launched Book of Spells, a Harry Potter augmented reality game that takes advantage of the PlayStation Move and new ‘Wonderbook’ peripheral. The game, which is intended for children, uses the Wonderbook as a tracking marker for the PlayStation Eye camera. The PlayStation Move is used as a wand. Together the peripherals appear to create a quite compelling augmented reality game world. But is it any fun?
If you’ve been following along for a bit here at Road to VR, you know I’ve got a chip on my shoulder when it comes to AR. So far we’ve seen few useful implementations of augmented reality. The technology exists to convincingly overlay virtual imagery onto our real world, but so far there’s no ‘killer app’ or usage scenario that is driving adoption of AR. So here’s a free idea for an augmented reality app: the keyboard trainer. First come, first served!
Time for a catch up on the latest Oculus Rift news. In this edition of ORNB we look at an Oculus Rift review of a prototype developer kit and learn details about the new 7″ display that the head mounted display is now using. Just learning about the Oculus Rift HMD? Click here to get caught up.
