Sulon Technologies is working on an ambitious Android-based HMD console for virtual reality and augmented reality gaming. The company is creating a platform capable of generating dynamic game environments based on the player’s physical environment.
The video above is of course just a concept video, but it shows what Sulon is aiming for with their AR/VR HMD console, the GVX.
The company is working on a dev kit of the GVX based on the Snapdragon 800 computing platform. They plan to pair the system with a high capacity battery, 6-inch 1080p glasses-free 3D screen, and a stereo camera, all running Android 4.2. This part of the GVX (called the GVX Player) will be a standalone handheld device (sans cellular radios) which could be used just like any Android device. Once connected to the head mount, Sulon says that GVX will turn into an all-in-one AR/VR HMD console.
Sulon intends to support two styles of gaming with the GVX: Active Gaming, where the environment around you is digitized to become your virtual game world, and Surface Gaming, an AR approach that creates a tabletop-like augmented reality game in front of you on a flat surface, similar to what CastAR is aiming for.
Surface Gaming will work with a pass-through video system using the 13MP stereo cameras on the GVX Player which have a 160 degree field of view, designed to match the field of view seen through the HMD itself.
For Active Gaming, Sulon told me that the GVX uses a proprietary 360 degree depth sensor that can scan the geometry of a room in 30ms down to 10mm accuracy. As the player walks around their environment, the system builds up a map of the space to be used in virtual reality gaming.
Game control will be done through a dual-wand controller with magnetic tracking technology from Sixense, dual analog sticks, buttons, and triggers.
The company is working on an SDK which will be capable of providing the environmental map to me utilized in games. Sulon says that game distribution will most likely happen through a dedicated store similar to that of the Google Play app store, and that the company plans to make some dev demos to help developers start making games for the system.
Sulon has a prototype of the GVX and is now exploring ways to fund a dev kit. They tell me that they’re learning toward venture capital but crowd-funding is not off the table. Meanwhile, timing and pricing are understandably unannounced.
