Leap Motion (not to be confused with Magic Leap) will release specifications for a $100 augmented reality headset:
Gesture interface company Leap Motion is announcing an ambitious, but still very early, plan for an augmented reality platform based on its hand tracking system. The system is called Project North Star, and it includes a design for a headset that Leap Motion claims costs less than $100 at large-scale production. The headset would be equipped with a Leap Motion sensor, so users could precisely manipulate objects with their hands — something the company has previously offered for desktop and VR displays.
Project North Star isn't a new consumer headset, nor will Leap Motion be selling a version to developers at this point. Instead, the company is releasing the necessary hardware specifications and software under an open source license next week. "We hope that these designs will inspire a new generation of experimental AR systems that will shift the conversation from what an AR system should look like, to what an AR experience should feel like," the company writes.
[...] While Leap Motion is citing an impressive price and field of view, Project North Star isn't (as far as we can see) meant to one-up headsets like HoloLens and Magic Leap. It's supposed to offer great hand interactions, but not advanced room-scale tracking, interaction with your environment, or a self-contained design. The design could be helpful for small players that want to experiment with augmented reality hardware, while requiring relatively little investment from Leap Motion itself.
Also at VentureBeat.
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Magic Leap has announced an augmented reality/mixed reality display. The price is unknown, but Magic Leap says it will ship in 2018:
After more than three years, Magic Leap has unveiled what it describes as a "creator edition" of its augmented reality system. The Magic Leap One consists of a pair of oversized cyberpunk-y goggles, a puck-shaped external computer called a Lightpack, and a handheld controller. It's supposed to accept "multiple input modes including voice, gesture, head pose and eye tracking," and maps persistent objects onto the environment — "place a virtual TV on the wall over your fireplace and when you return later, the TV will be right where you left it," the site promises. An SDK is supposedly coming in early 2018, and the hardware is supposed to ship at some point next year.
Magic Leap invited Rolling Stone to try out some demos, which include virtual characters that can react to eye contact, a floating virtual comic book, and a virtual live performance using volumetric camera capture. The piece seems to refute rumors that Magic Leap was having difficulty shrinking its technology to goggle size while keeping performance up, saying that "there was no stuttering or slowdowns, even when I walked around the performance, up close and far away."
The "puck-sized" tethered computer is an interesting compromise. It doesn't look like it would hinder mobility that much (you could compare it to a Walkman plus headphones), and it's much smaller than "VR backpack" concepts. However, it could be a good sign that you should not be an early adopter of Magic Leap One (which is actually the ninth generation of their hardware internally, according to Rolling Stone).
Some still call it vaporware. There is no video footage of the device being worn, and images have been retouched to "edit out some sensitive IP".
Will it take privacy seriously?
Again, not to be confused with Leap Motion.
Also at BBC, Tom's Hardware, Road to VR, Engadget, BGR, 9to5Google.
Previously: Developers Race to Develop VR Headsets that Won't Make Users Nauseous
Magic Leap Bashed for Being Vaporware
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 09 2018, @07:48PM (6 children)
That's all we need. That's it.
We don't need gesture tracking.
We don't need motion sensors.
That's all we've ever needed, and it could have been delivered decades ago.
(A|V)R will always be shit, because these smartypants are trying way too hard to do too much. We could have had 2 decades of technological progress on stereoscopic 3D imaging, but we missed it.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday April 09 2018, @07:57PM
What you need is a View-Master and a straitjacket. VR and AR are here to stay.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 09 2018, @08:09PM (3 children)
Project North Star: You are already dead.
Stereoscopic 3d imaging: What?!
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday April 09 2018, @08:11PM (2 children)
*Nani?!
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 09 2018, @08:26PM (1 child)
True, the English word what just doesn't have the impact that 何 does as an exclamation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 10 2018, @10:07PM
啥?!
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday April 09 2018, @08:24PM
Let's fully anal-yze your shitty post:
A bit presumptuous, aren't wwwwwweeeeee?
Interaction? Fuck that! I'd rather sit on my EZ-Chair looking at View-Master porn.
Nothing says immersive like an image that doesn't change in response to your movements.
Damn, Anonstradamus just condemned the technology FOREVER!
How dare they work on irrelevant things like smartphone displays and repurpose them for VR!
You could have gone into the attic and retrieved your View-Master, you lazy fuck.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday April 09 2018, @08:19PM
Leap did some very interesting gesture tracking, but I found it to be less than natural when I used it 5 years back.
This would be great in combination with other state-of-the-art players' tech, by itself it's just kinda weird (as the summary said.)
Nice of them to take the sharing approach - would be nice if Hololens and the others would open up and merge rather than building silos of near-adequacy (haven't been really impressed with any I've tried, especially Hololens' narrow field of view).
🌻🌻 [google.com]