I find this genuinely impressive... I know it's all concept work right now, the the thought behind it is very good. It makes more sense than just the VR helmets currently in development...
The "Minecraft" stuff is seriously cool...I can see a new world of "tabletop games" in general, especially where you don't need to get everyone in the same physical space, but just at a table, then the AR gets you all round the same virtual table.
Eurogamer have had a guy actually try the prototype as well (the link), and were similarly impressed...
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I particularly like the idea of sneaking one into the office when no one's about and graffitti-ing the sh!t out of the place.
If 'who built a massive dong in the boardroom?' doesn't become a regular refrain i will be most dissapointed.
The big difference between this and VR is that AR doesn't need to be immersive. I think this has a place in the office and home and VR still has a place in architecture, planning and (of course) gaming.
Is there a reason that these headsets cannot also do VR? So long as they get a wide enough field-of-view (and pixel counts etc in the relevant parts of the display to keep resolution sensible and suitable for the human eye), can they can (if required) remove transparency, isn't that VR at that point?
The screens they show added in certainly look non-transparent.
it could probably do both when it's finished AR is just an extension or tangent to VR depending on the implementation. Right now it's fairly early stuff on this device the real versions are aparantly bare circuit boards at this stage the high concept visor thing is just a hunk of plastic. Still interesting angle on the VR resurgence and not the only people going in this direction just the biggest name atm.
For VR to really trick the mind, the field of view needs to be huge and it needs to be enclosed so that you have no cues. Once you do that, you have to deal with humanity's various sensitivities, such as motion sickness. For AR, you don't need any of that because you're still in the real world. That means you can get away with lag, dodgy field of view and less pixels to push. AR will be cheaper, and that is a great thing because it means that take-up will be that much more.
I think the applications for VR are limited but for AR is huge. I can easily imagine using AR at work to increase my monitor size to infinity and to help us design stuff. I can also very easily see how websites could be built with AR in mind and for gaming, there are lots of options - creative mode in Minecraft would be superb.
I sat in an AR presentation back while I was still in Cyb (as a PhD) and the guy explained just about everything we saw in the video. He also made a few other assertions, one of which stuck: everyone will want an empty room in the house! As much a it's cool having the AR around the living room, to engage in the bigger simulations, you need lots of space where you're not going to trip over things. I remember him saying that it will rejuvinate the use of spare rooms.
I'm utterly excited and frothing at Microsoft's AR. Bring it on. And Windows 10. For free.
I was going to install a giant hamster-ball on rollers in my room..it seems the simplest way.
Just after graduating uni I looked at doing a sort of intern thing at UCL in their VR department when they were interviewing me I got to have a go in their cave which was a big room with a smaller empty space with floor ceiling and three walls all back projected with stereo images aligned to a pair of head tracking shutter glasses. It was a remarkable way to get what looked like a full 3d environment around me that I could walk about in.
But again it requires a massive room.
I'm not sure minecraft would work in AR the demo they show would change it from the game we all love to a low def model making application where you just put blocks down with a click. Didn't look like much fun.