Two days is a long time in tech. One day, a company’s announcing a new iteration of its hybrid Android camera, next thing you know, it’s already passing the FCC’s tests. You probably know the drill by now and with even less radios than the original Galaxy Camera, there’s less paperwork to browse this round. But if exposure reports are your sort of thing, then you should probably visit the source — there’s reading to be done. Two things not mentioned, however, is that darn release date and price tag.
The folks over at Facebook do seem to be involved in some sort of interesting human interactions lately, as we did cover the story on how police used Facebook to inform the tragic news of a son’s death to his mother. Having said that, this time around we have an egg fall flat on Facebook’s proverbial face, as a 104-year old Michigan grandmother, Marguerite Joseph, was unable to input her birthday due to an over age restriction.
Facebook has since stepped forward to issue an apology to this grandmother, as Marguerite needed to lie about her age when it comes to jumping aboard the social network bandwagon. An interview with Local 4 saw Marguerite Joseph’s granddaughter mention that Facebook did not allow her grandmother to list her actual age, as Facebook would change the birth year of 1908 to 1928. Guess she remained forever young at 99 on Facebook for the past two years, and Facebook spokesperson Andrew Noyes did mention, “We are working on a fix for this and we apologize for the inconvenience.”
Most of the post-processing done by a camera is handled by software that MIT researchers believe could be a lot smarter, faster, and user-friendly. So they’re developing a single chip that can handle these operations with remarkable efficiency. More »
Yesterday, Sony took two hours to officially announce the PlayStation 4 and show off a few games coming to the new console. They unveiled the new DualShock 4 controller, which has a touchpad, headphone jack, a dedicated share button, and redesigned joysticks, but where was the actual console? Sony’s president of Worldwide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida, explains.
Simply put, Yoshida says that they didn’t reveal everything because the company wanted “to keep something new for later. Otherwise you’d get bored.” Maybe that’s true, maybe it isn’t, but Yoshida has a point. E3 is coming up later in a few months, and that could be the time when Sony will unveil everything at that point.
As for the reasoning behind unveiling the new DualShock 4 controller, Yoshida says that the controller is “a very key idea behind the design of the PS4,” and since Sony took quite a bit of time showing off the new user interface of the PS4, it only made sense that they would show off the controller as well, especially considering it has a dedicated “Share” button on it, meant to instantly share content with friends and other gamers.
As for Sony’s plans at E3 2013 coming up in June, Yoshida told Eurogamer that announcing more PS4 details at the yearly gaming expo is “possible,” and Sony hopes to have most things “in final form” by the time E3 rolls around. However, he ultimately says that the company has “no plan or no date set for announcing these things.”
Augmented reality is going to be big, and Canon is jumping straight in with its MREAL System for Mixed Reality, a combination of a clever head-mounted display and integration with 3D graphics software to create a real-time virtual world you can interact with. Better known for its cameras, Canon is bringing that knowledge of lenses and optics to an innovative display system that blends the real world with computer graphics, using marker recognition so that physical objects can be picked out and manipulated in the digital environment. We caught up with Canon to try MREAL out, and see what you get for $125,000.
Canon is implemented true mediated reality with its headset, using stereoscopic cameras on the front of the HM-A1 HMD to take a view of the real world and then overlaying computer graphics, which are then fed to the twin displays inside. They run at 1280 x 960 resolution, higher than many cheaper HMDs we’ve seen, and use a specially created free-form prism display system that Canon claims means less distortion and fewer optical aberrations around the periphery.
Capturing and displaying graphics is only part of the overall system, however. The MREAL setup also requires tracking data, to know where the user is looking and what they’re interacting with, and of course a software platform that hooks into whatever 3D environment you’re exploring. On the sensor side, there’s a combination of visual markers and an optional gyroscopic sensor, the latter of which tracks the orientation of the headset in space per frame of video.
It’s the markers, though, that are more commonly relied upon. MREAL can work with optical and magnetic sensors, including third-party brands, but the most obvious are a series of QR-like glyphs which can be used to mark the sides of a physical mock-up. By tracking those glyphs, MREAL can map the movement of the virtual object against the user’s manipulation of its physical counterpart.
So, a basic model of a car, or a camera, or the control surface in the plane could be marked out with a few MREAL glyphs, and then Canon’s system will overlay whatever proposed controls or components are intended. The wearer can interact with those controls as if they were real, able to “look around” the environment with the physical perfectly matched to the digital representation.
On the software side, Canon’s MR Platform has been designed to hook into the most common CAD and 3D visualization packages, with an MR Platform SDK to make integrating existing graphic design software with MREAL straightforward. RTT, the makers of 3D visualization software RTT DeltaGen, has already confirmed it will be combining the package with MREAL; existing customers include Audi, BMW, GM, Ferrari, and Porsche, as well as Adidas and Electrolux.
It’s not just prototyping and industrial design that Canon sees as benefiting from MREAL, however. Another avenue the company is pushing is museum use, where visitors would be able to don an HM-A1 headset and have characters – whether famous faces from history, dinosaurs, wild animals, or fantasy constructions – appear in the real-world with them, interacting as if themselves real. Another possibility is retail, where designers of custom furniture, architects, and others could use MREAL to walk their customers through the design refinement process, tailoring the final product to them without costly iterative prototyping along the way.
Compared to the wearable displays we’ve seen on Google’s Glass and from others, Canon’s is obviously a league ahead. The blending of the digital graphics and what’s actually going on around you is surprisingly good, with the mapping of the two very accurate. You can see your hands – if the system decides they’re relevant to the environment – and after a little acclimatization, it really is like you’re handling a more complex object or coming face to face with a dinosaur.
Interactive Demo Gallery
We tried several demos with the MREAL system, tailored to different potential clients. In an educational-style environment, we were able to interact with a virtual dinosaur, walk around it and pet it, while still seeing other people in the vicinity not wearing a Canon HMD. In another setup, we were able to virtually “kick the tires” of a digital car, customizing colors and trim, exploring the dashboard, and generally seeing what we could expect to be driving despite the real-world object being far more basic in its design. A virtual earth-mover allowed us to experience the cabin and identify ergonomic flaws, such as controls that blocked access to the cup holder, and which might normally demand a physical prototype be built before the issue was identified. There’s more details in our hands-on videos.
Hands-on Demo Gallery
As Canon and its partners see it, the big difference between something like Glass and its MREAL system is the introduction of haptics. “We’re already overloading the eyes as it is” Simiosys’ Christopher Stapleton explained to us. “The question is what’s going through what channel, and how. So, this whole aspect of multitasking isn’t about the number of tasks, it’s about competition for attention.”
“You have all the senses, in all dimensions and all directions, all this impact, we’re overloading the eyes in proportion to the hearing, or the touch. The eyes have depth-perception to a certain extent, but the only interactive sense we have is touch, so the aspect of mixed-reality and haptics is a huge jump in how much we can do. What [Google] is doing is too much in one area.”
Meanwhile, the traditional idea of a GUI – whether text or icons – is quickly becoming overwhelmed by the complexity of what today’s systems can deliver. Instead, Stapleton argues, systems like MREAL can take what would be a very complex interface and make it more naturalistic. Today’s users aren’t looking for ever-increasing menus and toolbars, he says, but gesture response, social interaction, and a more human way of encountering the digital world.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, all this doesn’t come cheap. Canon will be selling the entire MREAL Mixed Reality System – the HM-A1 headset and the MR Platform software – for $125,000 from March 1, with a $25,000 annual maintenance fee on top. That might sound expensive, but Canon balances it against the existing costs companies face of producing a hardware prototype. That process – which can be relatively quickly and affordably mocked-up virtually using MREAL – is an even more expensive one, and it’s easy to see how MREAL could earn its keep over time.
It’s the morning after the night before, and Sony Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida has just confirmed to us that current-generation PSN titles won’t transfer across to the PlayStation 4. The company admitted last night that PS3 games wouldn’t be compatible with the latest console, but has added that it will try to make titles playable “in some form.” Because the architecture of the Power-PC-based PS3 and x86-based PlayStation 4 are so different, Sony will only bring across games that don’t guzzle the latest console’s power in emulation. The executive also said that the company aims to offer server-side and cloud services to offer a wider library of older games, but said that’s one for the “longer term.”
The USPTO has published a new patent application today from Google, which describes in comprehensive detail the complete system that would go on to become Google Glass, originally filed in August of 2011. The newly discovered patent describes not only individual components of Glass as we’ve seen previously, but the overall system, including display, frames, image projection and capture, wireless connections, sensors and more.
Some of the technical drawings included in the patent look a lot like the Google Glass we’ve come to know and love from its public appearance adorning sky divers and tech company founders who could be mistaken for jewel thieves. But others depict designs that resemble cheap paper 3D glasses, and hipster specs you might expect to see at Warby Parker. Google is clearly looking at multiple ways to bring Glass to market, aside from the sci-fi style visor it’s been showing around.
The text of the patent gets into extreme technical detail, offering a granular look at how Glass actually functions. It describes how the lens mounted display would operate in relation to the movement of a wearer’s head to keep the projected image consistent, and how objects in the real world can be overlaid with digital images to create augmented reality experiences. It goes into detail about various configurations of glasses arms and where the housing for the ‘brains’ of the device could be located relative to the rest of the glasses apparatus, and talks about building touch-sensitive surfaces into frame to accept user input.
Google also describes the limitations of current wearable tech interfaces in a section on background, which it uses to essentially give a reasoning for its creation of Google Glass. Existing systems were, in a word, deficient, according to the company’s filing:
Both head-mounted and heads-up displays can be connected to a video source that receives a video signal that the device can read and convert into the image that they present to the user. The video source can be received from a portable device such as a video player, a portable media player or computers […] The functionality of these types of displays is, however, limited to passive actions wherein the display simply receives information from an external source and presents it to the wearer in limited forms. Accordingly, further advances in wearable devices including displays have been needed.
Some of the more interesting elements from the detailed description of the patent include alternative display methods. We’ve seen the use of lens-mounted displays in the current prototype, but the patent also describes alternatives including “a laser or LED source and scanning system [that] could be used to draw a raster display directly onto the retina of one or more of the user’s eyes.” That sounds a little terrifying but also potentially exciting.
Overall, the patent is primarily about locking down Google’s IP with respect to the Glass project in as technically detailed a manner as possible, but it’s an interesting read for gadget heads or engineers who want to learn more about the nitty-gritty background behind Google’s most daring consumer hardware project.
If you’ve ever wondered which languages are spoken where in NYC, here’s the map for you. This visualization shows exactly which languages are used in tweets across the city. More »
By this point, it’s safe to say that Apple is at least considering the exploration of the hypothetical idea of testing a wearable iWatch-type product. So does this newly unearthed Apple patent, which shows off what amounts to a digital slap bracelet, shed new light on the company’s intentions? More »
If you’re an avid traveller, you might want to think about picking up a soon-to-go-on-sale Doodad pay-as-you-go SIM card: it offers flat-rate, 3G data, around the world, and will work in any unlocked GSM device. Neat. More »
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The folks over at Facebook do seem to be involved in some sort of interesting human interactions lately, as we did cover the story on how police used Facebook to 
