Nimble Sense and Riftmax Theater both launched Kickstarter campaigns recently and both are going well. Nimble Sense has passed its goal with plenty of time remaining, and Riftmax Theater is closing in on their 7th stretch goal.
Nimble Sense
NimbleVR launched their Nimble Sense Kickstarter on Tuesday last week and has now surpassed their goal of $62,500 with 38 days remaining. The campaign has been chosen as a ‘Staff Pick’ by Kickstarter.
Nimble Sense is a depth camera aimed at bringing user’s hands into virtual reality. The camera uses ‘time-of-flight’ technology which it says has unique advantages for VR over other depth cameras on the market. Time-of-flight uses laser pulses to bounce light off the surrounding environment and then carefully measures the returning light to determine the distance to discrete points of the environment. The resulting data produces a 3D point cloud that allows users to see their hands, desk, and more.
The company went to Kickstarter to raise funds to manufacture the Nimble Sense sensor and develop their SDK that will allow developers to integrate the device with games and software, enabling support for natural motion input.
Nimble Sense is designed to be mounted on the Oculus Rift, and comes with a mount that smartly replaces the Rift DK2’s cable cover, creating a modification-free way of mounting the sensor to the headset.
See Also: Nimble Sense Kickstarter Aims to Bring Time-of-Flight Depth-sensing Tech to VR on the Cheap
With 38 days remaining in their campaign, the company is expected to present stretch goals soon, to incentivize further funding.
In their first update on the Kickstarter page, NimbleVR shared a video which compares their product to the similar Leap Motion. The two are based on different sensing technology, but essentially aim to do the same thing—offer high fidelity hand-based input.
Nimble says “we believe our skeletal hand-tracking technology is the best in the world.” In the demonstration, neither of the units are mounted in a way that’s intended for VR use, so the test may not be a good indication of their comparative usefulness for that purpose.
Leap, who has pivoted their tech toward VR, say that they’re working on a device that’s designed to be built into future VR headsets.
See Also: Leap Motion’s Next-gen ‘Dragonfly’ Sensor is Designed for VR Headsets
Riftmax Theater
Riftmax Theater is a social platform for the Oculus Rift centered around a multi-purpose virtual theater which can be used to watch films with other users or even play host to live performances. Developer Internow Games took the project to Kickstarter on the 18th of October.
With its interesting goal of just $1, the campaign was naturally “funded” on the first day. The developers said that they chose this goal because they would continue developing the title with whatever resources were available, and sought to tie the VR community’s passion for the platform to the scope of the project. In a recent update on their Kickstarter, the team further explain their reasoning:
To expand a bit on our philosophy behind the $1 goal—What goal could we fairly put on a project that we’ve put out for free and always will? If we did set and were unable to meet a particular funding goal, we would not and could not simply turn Riftmax ‘off’. It’s important to us that everyone will get access to Riftmax whether they back us or not—and this is exactly the type of project we think crowdfunding is perfect for, as we’re a small team that’s proven its passion for the project but isn’t in a position to have traditional financing in place.
See Also: Riftmax Theater Heads to Kickstarter to Improve the Social VR Theater Experience
With 13 days to go, the campaign has raised over $6,000 and has crossed a series of stretch goals along the way:
- $500 – TV Cam Controls Toolkit: Addition of a simple user interface to allow a user running a server (and those they permit) to control multiple cameras/angles for st age/show productions for streaming/recording purposes.
- $1,000 – Screen Type Selector: A toggle that allows the users to select from a variety of screen types for their theater including curved, domed, and more to enhance the immersion.
- $1,500 – Stage Set Creator/Designer: An external stage set designer application, this will allow users to easily create their own set of customized stages/sets and camera positions for a variety of shows/performances as well as any use they can imagine! Includes support for unique object and texture imports as well as a huge assortment of pre-made items.
- $2,500 – 2 Unique Themed Theater Types: To be determined based on community poll to be run during the campaign.
- $4,000 – Customized Avatar Creator: To give the user more freedom to customize their avatar’s appearance, as opposed to simply a larger variety of pre-made avatars.
- $6,000 – Real Drive-in Theater: Hop into a vehicle of your choice in the Riftmax parking structure by yourself or with friends and drive to a “real” virtual drive-in theater!
The next stretch goal is for a ‘Space Theater Pack’, a set of theater environments set in space (and even a fly-in theater on the moon!), at $8,000.
A beta version of Riftmax Theater can be downloaded from the developer’s website.
Full Disclosure: NimbleVR is running an ad on Road to VR.
