Hasta La Gadget!

Here’s another device that could be vying for space on your face in the near future. A company called Avegant is making what they call a Virtual Retinal Display. The thing is, it doesn’t actually have displays. Instead, it uses “an array of two million micromirrors” to project light directly to the retinas of the wearer.

Avegant hasn’t revealed a lot about its technology, but it did let journalists use some of its prototypes. Apparently, the Virtual Reality Display causes much less eye strain compared to LCD monitors and other head-mounted displays. As for how good it is, Engadget claims that wearing the display’s  image quality “blows everything else out of the water”, even though the prototypes max out at just 1280 x 768 for each eye. They said that it even made a 360 x 160 video “look great.”

If it’s such a great way to show video, why have we not seen more of these “retinal displays”? According to CNET, other companies have indeed dabbled with the technology. Even Google tested it for Glass. But apparently the retinal displays need to be precisely aligned to the wearer’s face and eyes to work, which is why it’s not great for a one size fits all headset. To solve that problem, the Virtual Retinal Display will have highly adjustable frames and optics.

All these 3D and head-mounted displays coming out are making me hate my monitor. And my sunglasses. As Avegant CEO Ed Tang told CNET, the Virtual Reality Display should be available by the first quarter of 2014.

[via CNET & Engadget via Digital Trends]

Hilmar Pétursson is convinced virtual reality gaming will be mainstream in 2014. It’s a bold claim to put to people who, by next year, will have been exhausted by next-gen console purchases. But Pétursson has already tasked 20 engineers at his company, CCP, with creating what looks set to be the first major game designed solely for the Oculus Rift VR headset. EVE Valkyrie is a high-profile commitment: a Wing Commander-esque dogfighting title, which will tie into the same universe as CCP’s main PC and console properties, EVE Online and Dust 514. The question is whether significant numbers of gamers will choose to spend an estimated $300 on a pair of Oculus goggles. For a number of reasons — some immediate, some futuristic and others downright outlandish — Pétursson believes they’ll come up with the money. They won’t be able to stop themselves.

Filed under: Displays, Gaming, Wearables

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We’ve seen the memorable ending scene of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope recreated with LEGO and in Minecraft, but YouTuber Boone Calhoun is working on a way to not just recreate but to experience the scene through Luke’s point of view as well: a 3D videogame version that’s meant to be played using the Oculus Rift.

Boone hasn’t released the game yet, but if you have the Oculus Rift you can check out how it will look in the video below:

I wonder if Desert Bus will be more fun or more excruciating with the Oculus Rift.

[via I Heart Chaos]

For most history students, "exploring the past" means sifting through mountains of data. But digital archaeologist Marcus Abbott wants to make early human civilization—or its digital simulacra—freely accessible to anyone who wants to explore it. His first prehistoric VR environment? A 3,000-year-old spiritual site in the East Anglian fens.

Read more…

Last year when I saw YEI Technology’s Unreal Engine demo of their 3-Space Sensors, I mentioned how it might be able to integrate with the Oculus Rift for a more immersive virtual reality experience. Turns out the company had the same plan all along. YEI recently launched a Kickstarter fundraiser for PrioVR, an improved and affordable version of the 3-Space Sensors.

The PrioVR sensors are significantly smaller than the 3-Space Sensors and will also include an input unit. The latter is for plugging in additional external input, i.e. physical controllers such as a joystick or a gamepad. Data from sensors and input units will be sent to a “centralized wearable wireless hub architecture”, which in turn will beam the data to a base station that has a USB output.

PrioVR currently comes in two developer kits: PrioVR Lite includes 11 sensors, 1 input unit, the wireless hub, the base station plus the straps needed to wear all of the electronics. The PrioVR Pro kit adds 6 more sensors and 1 more input unit to the Lite kit. As expected, the kits will come with SDK and API so developers can adapt or build games around PrioVR. YEI Technology also said that “major game engines will be supported” and that they will also release “demo projects and open source code examples.”

Pledge at least $450 (USD) on Kickstarter to get a PrioVR dev kit as a reward. I wonder what gaming companies and console makers think of all these virtual reality hardware. The Omni VR treadmill in particular seems to be in direct competition with the PrioVR. I also find it hilarious that Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft seem to have given up on motion-controlled gaming when in fact they popularized it with their respective efforts, especially with the Wii and the Kinect. I guess they weren’t able to connect the dots to virtual reality. Perhaps no one really did until the Oculus Rift hit the scene.

However, while the PrioVR and other VR hardware have immense potential, I think it’s safe to say that we’re still years away from seeing consumer versions of any of them. I think the manufacturers need to sort out who their partners will be and eventually release a complete package for consumers and game developers alike. They can’t expect us to buy various VR hardware separately without knowing which games they’ll work with. Remember, as of now these sensors and headsets are separate from PCs and consoles – you know, the machines that actually run games. If folks are already balking at the Xbox One’s price, imagine how they’ll react when they find out you have to shell out hundreds of dollars for a console or a gaming PC, $300 for the Oculus Rift and then $450 more for the sensors. Holy crap. A subscription-based cloud gaming setup – with free-to-play games – almost makes sense from my wallet’s perspective.

[via PrioVR]