Last month Sony launched Book of Spells, a Harry Potter augmented reality game that takes advantage of the PlayStation Move and new ‘Wonderbook’ peripheral. The game, which is intended for children, uses the Wonderbook as a tracking marker for the PlayStation Eye camera. The PlayStation Move is used as a wand. Together the peripherals appear to create a quite compelling augmented reality game world. But is it any fun?
If you’ve been following along for a bit here at Road to VR, you know I’ve got a chip on my shoulder when it comes to AR. So far we’ve seen few useful implementations of augmented reality. The technology exists to convincingly overlay virtual imagery onto our real world, but so far there’s no ‘killer app’ or usage scenario that is driving adoption of AR. So here’s a free idea for an augmented reality app: the keyboard trainer. First come, first served!
Time for a catch up on the latest Oculus Rift news. In this edition of ORNB we look at an Oculus Rift review of a prototype developer kit and learn details about the new 7″ display that the head mounted display is now using. Just learning about the Oculus Rift HMD? Click here to get caught up.
Minecraft Reality is an AR app created by 13th Lab in Conjunction with Minecraft developer Mojang. The app, which is currently only available for iOS devices, allows users to place Minecraft creations in the real world as augmented reality objects. Minecraft Reality uses PointCloud, a free software engine for iOS which is capable of simultaneous localization and mapping (also known as SLAM), also developed by 13th Lab.
This sounds like a simple question, but it is one that I’ve been meaning to discuss. Without a foundation, everything we talk about on this site is more or less floating somewhere in abstract space. To ground the subject, and to truly understand it, we must ask and define: what is virtual reality?
In the world of technology reporting, it’s rare to have a good excuse to stare at beautiful women. Let’s indulge while we have the opportunity — as I noted earlier, Google Glass walked the runway in September during New York Fashion Week at the DvF Spring 2013 collection showing. Not all of the models wore the Google glasses but I’ve compiled a gallery of photos from the show of those models that did. Here we see many colors of Google’s lightweight HMD that haven’t been previously revealed. Google has previously shown off glasses and sunglasses versions as well.
This one slipped under my radar but I think it’s worth a mention. Back in September, Spencer Ante of the Wall Street Journal spoke with Google co-founder Sergey Brin and got a brief exclusive preview of Google Glass (sometimes mistakenly refered to as Google Glasses!). During his time wearing the Google Glass display, Sergey showed Spencer a panoramic viewing mode — a capability not previously revealed. Glass also had a debut on the runway at New York Fashion week.
Not the best news for backers of the Oculus Rift Kickstarter this morning — Oculus Inc. has announced that shipment of the Oculus Rift developer kit has been delayed until March. The company also says that they’re moving up to a larger 7″ screen with better performance. They’ve released new photos of the latest Oculus Rift prototype and it’s definitely looking good!
TIME Magazine has named Google Glass as one of the ‘Best Inventions of 2012’ which is interesting because they also mention that the product isn’t expected on the market until 2014….
Vuzix has just introduced the M100 Smart Glasses. The M100 is an unobtrusive head mounted display, much like Google Glass, which Vuzix hopes will be used as a hands-free smartphone display and for augmented reality applications. In addition to being able to pair wirelessly with Android and iOS devices, the Vuzix M100 HMD is a standalone Android device capable of downloading and running applications of its own. The company plans to release the M100 in 2013.
After talking about Cave Augmented Virtual Environments the other day, reader Yossi pointed out that the Belgium band Willow recently utilized a CAVE in a music video for their song Sweater. The band put together a very neat sequence using the VR platform and incorporated a treadmill to allow the star of the video ‘walk’ through the virtual reality scene.
While inexpensive head mounted displays and virtual reality locomotion platforms promise to bring VR to the mainstream in the near future, you might be surprised to find that extremely immersive and interactive virtual reality environments already exist today. We talked about VIRTSIM the other week, and now we’d like to show you the Cave Automatic Virtual Environment, also known as a CAVE.
Once again it’s time for an update on the latest Oculus Rift news. First of all, Oculus LLC is now Oculus Inc., according to the company’s official website. This morning they’ve dropped an update to Kickstarter backers which includes photo of both an early model of the Oculus Rift housing and the head tracker that the company has been developing. The company is also teasing that they’re working on squeezing in some unnamed “key features” prior to shipping the first batch of developer kits.
Today Carl Zeiss is announcing that the Cinemizer head mounted display is available in the US and Canada for $749. The Carl Zeiss Cinemizer has technically been available for a few months, though it would seem that the company is ramping up production slowly as the initial batch quickly sold out. Previously you couldn’t find the Cinemizer HMD anywhere but Europe. Now Total 3D Solutions has been named as the distributor of the Cinemizer in the US and Canada.
Montas is an upcoming indie horror game with support for the Oculus Rift. We heard about Montas a few months back and now the creators, Organic Humans, have begun a crowd-funding campaign to help them raise money to get the game to market. “Montas is a first person survival horror adventure game focused on exploration, immersion, atmosphere, story and interactivity,” according to the creators. A copy of the game for be yours for $10 through the crowd-funding campaign which is hosted on Indiegogo.
