Head-mounted displays (HMD) have been around for years, though they tend to be prohibitively expensive. Caputer Labs is touting its Seer as an augmented reality display, though it could end up simply being a cheap HMD instead.
Seer is meant to project and magnify a smartphones’ display and will work with smartphones that have screens between 4″ to 6″. Its mirror reflects the smartphones’ display onto a single lens that’s a few inches in front of the wearer’s eyes. Caputer Labs claims the view from the 100º field-of-view lens can be the equivalent of looking at a 200″ screen from 8ft. away.
Despite the enticing claims in its pitch video, Seer has no sensors of its own and relies completely on apps and the ever fragmented world of smartphone hardware for augmented reality features. On one hand, this helps drive the product’s price down and gives developers more freedom to use the tools they’re comfortable with. On the other hand, that makes Seer the Google Cardboard of augmented reality: a barebones display that has no interactive capabilities. Check out Seer’s demo videos and you’ll see what I mean:
The VR mode mentioned in the demo videos involves attaching a light-blocking plate over the Seer’s lens. In other words, Seer’s VR mode simply means making the display opaque; it’s still not stereoscopic 3D. Caputer Labs will also release a Seer variant that has a 5″ 1080p LCD display with an HDMI output, so instead of putting a smartphone in it you’ll connect it to a console or PC.
Unless millions of people buy it – turning it into a standard of sorts – Seer’s success as an augmented reality display is suspect. But if it’s well built I can see people getting one just so they can have a large display on the go. That’s well and good, but it’s hardly Tony Stark territory.
Pledge at least $99 (USD) on Kickstarter to receive a Seer headset as a reward. The Seer with a 5″ display is offered as a reward for pledges of at least $198.
[via Road to VR]
Ad-blocking software is a double-edged sword, but overall I still think it needs to exist. But as Sean Tejaratchi so effectively explained, the barrage of ads online is nothing compared to what’s happening in the real world. That’s why Reed Rosenbluth, Jonathan Dubin, Tom Catullo, and Alex Crits-Christoph created Brand Killer, a prototype head-mounted display that blurs brands and logos in the real world in real time.
Brand Killer blocks your direct line of sight, but gives you a stereoscopic 3D display of the live feed from a camera on top of the headset as your proxy vision. It uses image processing to spot brands and logos and then blurs them out in the video feed delivered to the stereoscopic 3D display.
You can check out Brand Killer’s code on Jonathan Dubin’s GitHub page. The idea behind the prototype is undoubtedly noble but I think the execution is poor. That lag is going to give you a headache within minutes, if not seconds. It would be better implemented on an augmented reality system similar to Google Glass or Word Lens.
[via Hack A Day]
Mobile phone 3D or virtual reality headsets are one of the newest tech accessories. Like Google’s Cardboard, the Viewbox is on the cheap and low-tech side. But instead of paper it’s made of neoprene, a synthetic rubber used in many products, from wetsuits to laptop sleeves.
According to maker Evomade, despite its simplicity Viewbox offers several significant benefits. It’s portable and is equally easy to fold and unfold. It’s also washable – I bet headset users will thank Viewbox for this over the years. It’s also designed to direct weight onto the wearer’s forehead instead of on the nose, making it easier to wear for longer amounts of time.
The Viewbox does have a few obvious drawbacks. Its lenses are not adjustable, though Evomade asserts that this will not be a problem. Backers on Kickstarter also pointed out that VR apps need to be optimized to the optical characteristics of a headset’s lens, otherwise the image produced might be distorted. Evomade says that although its lenses have a wider field of view than the lenses used on Cardboard, they are still similar enough that the Cardboard apps should work just fine. But the company also said it will provide developers with its lenses’ specs to eliminate this problem. Finally, something that hasn’t been pointed out to Evomade on Kickstarter is that some people are allergic to neoprene, so you should test for that before considering the Viewbox.
Pledge at least kr200 (~$26 USD) on Kickstarter to receive a Viewbox as a reward.
