Virtual/Augmented Reality News

The Elusive Virtual Reality

For years now we have been hearing about the Oculus Rift, a virtual reality head-mounted display. Finally it appears it will be coming to market with a consumer version priced around $1500 becoming available in the first quarter of 2016. The reviews have been good, though the devices look like something millennials' kids will mock 25 years from now.

Tech Radar Interview with Oculus's Head of Mobile, Max Cohen

Meanwhile Microsoft is getting into the game with an augmented reality device, the Hololens.

Here is the the Microsoft Presentation

As you can see, it is a different approach as is indicated by "augmented reality" as opposed to "virtual reality". Here is an interesting article on the Hololens:

Microsoft's HoloLens Will Put Realistic 3-D People in Your Living Room

Demonstrations of augmented-reality displays typically involve tricking you into seeing animated content such as monsters and robots that aren't really there. Microsoft wants its forthcoming HoloLens headset to mess with reality more believably. It has developed a way to make you see photorealistic 3-D people that fit in with the real world. With this technology, you could watch an acrobat tumble across your front room or witness your niece take some of her first steps. You could walk around the imaginary people just as if they were real, your viewpoint changing seamlessly as if they were actually there. A sense of touch is just about the only thing missing.

That experience is possible because Microsoft has built a kind of holographic TV studio at its headquarters in Redmond, Washington. Roughly 100 cameras capture a performance from many different angles. Software uses the different viewpoints to create a highly accurate 3-D model of the person performing, resulting in a photo-real appearance. The more traditional approach of using computer animation can't compare, according to Steve Sullivan, who works on the project at Microsoft. He demonstrated what Microsoft calls "video holograms" at the LDV Vision Summit, an event about image-processing technology, in New York on Tuesday. More details of the technology will be released this summer. "There's something magical about it being real people and motion," he said. "If you have a HoloLens, you really feel these performances are in your world."

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