In 1992, the novel Snow Crash introduced to science fiction readers the idea of seamlessly merging digital reality with the real world, something the author, Neal Stephenson, dubbed the “metaverse.”
So far, the augmented reality (AR) consumer revolution hasn’t taken off as expected. Devices like Google Glass and others in that space proved to be too expensive and inflexible for use by most people. But a new system produced by Israel’s InfinityAR could change that, with a technology that will sharply lower the cost of AR equipment and make it easier for developers to build applications for gaming, medical research, education, and much more.
VeloReality’s indoor training equipment now enables avid cyclists to train beside each other in a virtual reality ride, without braving the off-season weather.
It seems everyone’s got an accelerator these days. You’ve got the blue-chip models, like Y Combinator, and the big-money backed efforts, like Disney’s. Now, the initial batch of companies in what could be the first virtual reality accelerator have been announced.
With virtual reality systems like Oculus Rift as well as Microsoft’s new HoloLens, and Magic Leap getting so much attention these days, developers are swarming to the new technology. And now, some of them are getting the kind of early-stage help that could, they hope, make them successful.
Following Facebook’s $2 billion purchase of Oculus VR and Samsung’s launch of their Gear VR Innovator Edition headset, no one doubts that virtual reality is hot. Isn’t it time that someone started on a standard for VR gaming?
Two Silicon Valley companies have developed a 3-D virtual reality kit that lets medical students and doctors practice surgeries and organ dissections without the messiness of working on real cadavers.
Three-dimensional holographic imaging display maker zSpace, based in Sunnyvale, provides the hardware, including stereoscopic VR displays and transparent glasses. Mountain View's EchoPixel Inc., which makes medical imaging technology, provides the software.
I’m seated at a table in a downtown Toronto condo that’s been converted into the offices of Cordon Development Labs. In front of me is a man with an iPhone 6 strapped to his face. The phone is nestled in a bright-orange, 3-D-printed case that his team has designed. He is gesturing in mid-air using LED-encrusted “rings” on his index fingers.
The man is Milan Baic, president of Cordon. His product is called Pinć (pronounced “Pinch”), and as he waves his arms about like a blind man trying to touch the face of someone he can’t quite reach, I’m told that I’m looking at the future of mobile online shopping.
Of all the praise heaped upon Oculus, the virtual-reality company that Facebook acquired for $2 billion earlier this year, perhaps the most significant has been this: non-nauseating. I can testify to that after my visit last month to the groovy downtown Manhattan offices of Relevent, a marketing agency that has created a virtual-reality demo for HBO to help promote its hit series “Game of Thrones.” Without much small talk, Ian Cleary, Relevent’s vice president of “innovation and ideation,” escorted me into a steampunk cage the size of a phone booth, made of iron and wood.
From here on out, I want all virtual reality demos to use Crescent Bay. I realize that’s completely unfair and unrealistic for developers who are working with older headsets, but the new Oculus Rift prototype comes amazingly close to achieving the kind of VR we’ve read about or seen in countless sci-fi books and movies.
