Hasta La Gadget!

Jerry’s Place is a project about nothing from programmer Greg Miller for the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset. And it is unlike any other. This one recreates Jerry Seinfeld’s apartment from Seinfeld with 3D models created in Blender for the Unity game engine.

Greg says:

After purchasing the Oculus rift I started imagining what my first project might be. I decided to pick a project that would gradually introduce me to Unity without being overly complex. I was not new to 3D modeling, however this would be my first project in Unity. I came up with the idea of recreating Jerry’s apartment, in it’s entirety for virtual reality.

Jerry’s Place is available for download for Windows and Mac OSX on the project’s website. Seinfeld fans are going to love spending some time with this one.

I wonder if Kramer ever bursts through the door.

[via Waxy via Laughing Squid]

We first heard about Avegant’s Glyph retinal display a few months ago, which uses tiny mirrors and optics to reflect images directly to the user’s eyes instead of using conventional displays. Now in beta, the Glyph has a new trick: a headphone mode.

Glyph Beta has an equivalent resolution of 1280 x 720 for each eye, a 45º horizontal field of view and a 120Hz refresh rate.

It also has head-tracking capabilities, a microphone, an HDMI input and a 3.5mm TRRS input for audio. Its internal battery lasts up to 3 hours and is recharged over microUSB.

Pledge at least $499 (USD) on Kickstarter to get a Glyph beta unit as a reward. Without the benefit of a hands on experience, I’m finding it hard to get too excited about the Glyph. But I do hope that the headphone functionality is carried over into its final version.

With gadgets like the Oculus Rift and Google Glass, it’s looking like the future of displays is going to be a war for space on our faces. Here’s one more promising invention that may make you wish you had several pairs of eyes and foreheads. castAR glasses can not only beam stereographic 3D to your eyes a la Oculus Rift, they can also project 3D video to the real world.

castAR is the invention of Technical Illusions, a company setup by former Valve employees Jeri Ellsworth and Rick Johnson. The two are videogame industry veterans with decades of software and hardware expertise between them. Their device can display hologram-like videos and images in 3D using two micro-projectors and a retro-reflective sheet.

Aside from acting as a display, the sheet is also required for motion tracking. A camera in the middle of the glasses tracks infrared markers on the sheet to deduce the wearer’s head position and orientation. The wearer’s perspective is properly adjusted as he moves around the sheet, as if you were looking at a physical object from different angles.

The wand shown several times in the video is a controller designed to work with the glasses. It has buttons, a trigger and a joystick, and it can also track its own position. As you saw in the video the controller is used to interact with the projected images, increasing the illusion that there really is something in front of you.

What I find most exciting are the RFID add-ons. You can get an RFID tracking grid that can track RFID tags. The tags can do anything from summoning a figurine into the game – similar to Skylanders – or displaying stats. But there’s also an add-on with called an RFID Base. The base is essentially a tiny computer that can control other hardware. For example, as Technical Illusions mentions in its Kickstarter page, you could have an RFID Base with red LEDs and a tiny smoke machine. Stick a dragon figurine on top of that base and your game can trigger the base to become a glowing, smoke-belching monster. If that doesn’t make you support castAR I don’t know what will.

Pledge at least $189 (USD) on Kickstarter to get the castAR glasses plus the retro-reflective sheet.

[via Reddit]

New videogame systems all have one weakness: there are barely any games that come out at the same time as the hardware. The PS Vita and the Wii U are the most recent victims of this dilemma. Even though the Oculus Rift is a head-mounted display and not a console, it’s so different from other monitors that it’s going to have the same problem. But not if VorpX can help it.

The VorpX stereoscopic 3D driver converts Windows games that make use of DirectX 9, 10 and 11 so that they’ll be compatible with the Oculus Rift. It currently works with 90 games, including Bioshock Infinite, Fallout 3 and Mirror’s Edge, all of which you’ll see in the demo below. You can read the full list of compatible games here.

Aside from converting games, the driver also has a number of features to make it easier to play today’s games with the next-generation display. Users can make a virtual keyboard pop up on the screen, which I assume they can then operate with a mouse, negating the need to see the keyboard that they’re using. Users can customize the virtual keyboard as they see fit. VorpX also has a feature called Edge Peek. Activated by pressing the mouse scroll wheel, Edge Peek lets you look at the edge of the screen.

Edge Peek may not be needed in future Oculus Rift-ready games, but it might be a requirement for games from the current generation or earlier. That’s because the headset crops what you’d normally see on a traditional display, which means anything that’s on the far edges of the screen won’t be visible. But many games place critical information like radar or items on the edges of the screen, hence the need for Edge Peek. It’s not an optimal solution, but it’s better than nothing. Another feature related to Edge Peek is the option to zoom out the view, which should come in handy for viewing cinematics.

VorpX also supports two 3D modes, one of which results in better graphics but is more resource-intensive than the other option.

The driver is currently in beta, but VorpX is already charging for it. If you want to take the plunge, head to Road to VR to order the software; $40 (USD) gets you two licenses. Check out Road to VR’s article to find out more about the driver.

[VorpX via Engadget]

I’ve had the opportunity to try out a number of head-mounted displays over the years, and most of them have been pretty underwhelming, either from a display quality or comfort perspective. And while many users are waiting to see what the consumer version of the Oculus Rift has to offer, there is already a very capable head-mounted display – with a head-tracking option – on the market today.

The Zeiss Cinemizer display is by far the most comfortable head-mounted display I’ve ever worn. The glasses weigh only 4.2 ounces, and place less than 3 ounces of weight on the bridge of your nose, which makes them comfortable for long viewing sessions. Inside the Cinemizer’s white goggles, it packs a pair of 870 x 500 resolution OLED displays. These tiny 8mm x 5mm displays provide an insane pixel density of 2500 ppi, and extremely rich colors.

The displays themselves offer a sharp, noise-free picture to each of your eyes, and pixel structure is virtually indistinguishable to my eyes. That said, small text is definitely harder to read than on a true 1080p display, but gameplay and movie content looks great. I encountered no motion blur to speak of, though I did see a little bit of a “blooming” effect which is a typical side-effect of self-illuminating displays. There’s also a small amount of blue fringing around high contrast areas of the image, such as white on a black background. But these issues are minor, and I still found the displays to be on-par or better than other HMD screens I’ve used before. They’re definitely sharper than the displays in the current build of the Oculus Rift, and nearly as good as the displays in Sony’s HMZ-T2 – a competing display with higher resolution OLED screens that’s major downfall is a lack of portability and its very poor comfort. Comfort is definitely not an issue with the Cinemizer.

The Cinemizer offers diopter adjustments for each eye, so they’re easily tweaked to your individual vision, so you don’t wear your glasses while wearing them. While watching content, the displays simulate a 40-inch widescreen display, viewed at about 6.5 feet away from your eyes. While this isn’t as immersive as the Oculus Rift, or going to watch a movie in IMAX, it’s certainly more immersive than playing games on most computer monitors or watching movies on your laptop or tablet screen. By design, you can still see outside of the glasses a bit, so you can occasionally look at your keyboard, mouse or game controller, but there’s also an optional rubber eyeshield which can plunge you into movie theater darkness.

One big advantage the Cinemizers offer is that they’re battery powered. The included USB-rechargeable battery pack is good for anywhere from 2.5 hours to 6 hours, depending on whether you’re feeding it with a digital or analog video source. I only tested it with an HDMI input, and got enough battery power to watch the entirety of Avatar. And speaking of Avatar – the Cinemizers support stereoscopic 3D. Since each eye views an independent image, there’s no flicker, and no decrease in brightness like you get with displays which require 3D glasses. I found the 3D image quality to be quite good – though the depth isn’t as impressive as the 3D I get from my Samsung plasma display or from an IMAX 3D theater. That said, the 3D is definitely a nice bonus.

I tested the Cinemizers with their optional head-tracker module, a small USB device which replaces one of the adjustable ear pads. This gadget emulates the movements of a standard USB mouse, so any game that uses a mouse to look around can be used with the Cinemizer’s head-tracker. This worked seamlessly on all of the FPSes I could throw at it on my Mac and my PC, and it definitely made looking around in games more intuitive and immersive than with a mouse. That said, to use the head-tracking feature on a PS3 or Xbox 360, you’ll need to pick up a third-party adapter, such as the Penguin Eagle Eye, which sells for about $60. There’s also support for full X/Y/Z axis tracking when using the appropriate SDK.

In addition to playing games and watching movies, I could also imagine the Cinemizers working well for first-person view piloting of remote-controlled vehicles and drones. There’s also an optional $79 adapter for plugging in iOS devices, which replaces the standard HDMI output module of the Cinemizer, but only works with devices with a 30-pin connector. This could definitely come in handy for watching movies on long trips.

There are just a couple of minor complaints I have with the Cinemizer. One, they come with built-in earbud jacks and a pair of earbuds for privacy. That’s all well and good, but the audio quality is weak and tinny. Thankfully, there’s a headphone jack on the battery pack so you can use your own headphones. My other complaint is that the cabling is a bit bulky when using the head tracker. It would be nice if there were a single molded cable that carried both HDMI and USB signals, but instead, you end up with a pair of cables sticking out of the glasses, and then another cable sticking out of the battery pack to connect an HDMI cable into. I also wish the rubber eyeshield were included. When you’re spending $800 or more on device, you’d think they could throw those in rather than charge you another $39 for those. And while they throw in a handy carrying case, it’s not quite big enough if you’re trying to cram in the glasses, the head-tracker and all of its cables.

Overall, I was impressed with the Cinemizer. It’s a nifty device, and is portable enough that you could take it on the road to really enhance your private video viewing experience. It’s lightweight and comfortable and is compatible with standard video sources. Plus its optional head-tracker is great for playing FPSes and racing games. The biggest thing standing in the way of the Cinemizer is its price. The goggles themselves list for $799(USD), and the head tracker will add another $229. $1000 will buy a you any of a number of good LCD and plasma TVs these days, so unless you really need privacy while playing content, it’s tough to justify the expense. Hopefully, the price will be driven down with time as the cost of components comes down.