Windows Holographic & Vuforia

Apparently they will make their software support all of the AR or VR tethered headsets.

This will certainly be a boost to the demand for the display technology, and will probably have other unanticipated results.

And with software like Vuforia available, its popularity should be huge


ARS Technica

At IDF in San Francisco today, Microsoft's Terry Myerson said that the Windows Holographic experience, including the shell used on the HoloLens hardware, will be made available as an update to the standard Windows 10 desktop operating system some time next year.

Currently, the HoloLens runs a specialized variant of Windows. Desktop Windows offers many of the same APIs as the HoloLens, but the 3D user interface that mixes existing 2D apps with new 3D ones is only available on the augmented reality headset. Next year's update will make it available to all, opening it up not just to Microsoft's standalone device but also to hardware such as the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive that provide tethered virtual reality.

Vuforia at Hololens Reality News

Vuforia is a set of tools that help developers build augmented and mixed realityexperiences. One of the prominent abilities, as demonstrated in the video above, is the ability to automatically render holograms when the cameras see a flat image. Basically, the image will display flat to anyone without a mixed reality device looking with just their eyes. Those with a HoloLens, however, will see a hologram in place of the flat image on the paper. That opens up a number of possibilities of how we can share mixed reality experiences out in the real world.

Alert reader on Yahoo Message board found this article. Interesting and looks like Microvision's fingerprints to me.

From EEtimes

Today Valve Corp. (Bellevue, Wash.) has a VR headset that is "10 generations ahead anything available today", according to McCauley, by using more accurate head tracking by replacing the camera Oculus uses with a rotating motor driven line-laser. The line laser is essentially a gigantic laser housing a motor spinning a curved mirror mounted on the wall across from the user, that scans across head mounted IR detectors to determine how far away the head is by measuring the time between IR sensor intercepts.

At McCauley Labs they will replace the bulky moving laser mechanism, with a MEMS mirror and a line-laser (or alternatively a 2-axis MEMS mirror and a point laser to raster scan in the manner of a one-mirror pico projector) to perform the same kind of head location geometry and calculation as the Valve System, but micro-miniaturized.

The system will also turn off the backlight for imperceptible periods between frames, to prevent the blurring that otherwise contributes to simulator sickness, making the result VR experience as real as reality itself, or so McCauley claims.

CES Day 3

It was a short day at CES for me, and I used it to follow up on some things I'd missed.  Half the day was travel, and a large part of Saturday was catching up on sleep, reconnecting with friends and nursing a sore knee.

The Bed Display at SONY.

SONY had a display of MPCL1 in a bed. The bed was a canopy bed, and the MPCL1 was in a tray pointed up at the Canopy. 

I had missed this the previous time through this section of the show, and heard good things, so I returned to see it. I was glad I did.

I stayed by this display for about 45 minutes. It was almost constantly crowded with people, universally smiling and often asking if it's available now, and how they could buy it.

This was an excellent display, and probably the most popular at the display other than the VR Gear (I admit I'm a bit biased)








Augmented reality, the Daqri Helmet & Microvision Nomad

That's the Daqri Helmet in the background. I had a chance to wear and unpowered model. It's quite heavy - more than twice the weight of a normal hard hat. They admitted that field of view is still limited - like a 120" screen at 10 feet -- which actually looks like a laptop screen on your lap. 

It's probably a lot like a hololens that has an incorporated hard-hat. The industrial uses could be incredible.

Daqri Helmet Press Release

Daqri Helmet at LinuxGizmos

The Osterhaut Group   -- The R7 Smart Glasses

I had a chance to try this technology on in a couple of places. Once with a company who was developing it for remote medical help, and with another company that was using it to help people with limited vision. 

The glasses are reputed to be the best, with the largest field of view. 

I had an opportunity to try on the NOMAD in the MicroVision booth -- the field of view is better -- and it's an older system. I was assured that now the resolution is better and the field of vision is wider.

I did miss the BMW AR Helmet, which does look like it may be capable of a wider field of vision. I'll be looking for more on it.

DK50 Augmented Reality Glasses  (50 degree field of view)

Recon Glasses -- a very small screen outside the direct field of view. If you look down and right the small display -- maybe a dozen characters worth or a compass readout

The place was packed with various kinds of augmented reality glasses... From what I've seen MicroVision could make most of them much better than they are. 


The HTC virtual reality headset

I did have an opportunity to try the HTC VR headset. It was a remarkably intense experience.

Remember that this is similar to the Oculus Rift, Sony VR, and Samsung Gear VR. (Notice there's a LOT of competition.) I've tried on the others, except the SONY model. MicroVision isn't in competition with any of these, but I do notice that the market value of Oculus Rift was 2 Billion when Facebook bought the company -- it's not very special compared to PicoP. Still cool though.

Google, VR & AR -- the chicken and the egg

With VR and AR, this is a serious problem. Everyone is talking about Virtual and Augmented Reality, but they have an adoption problem. Even the coolest device has little content, and the greatest content has no device to play it. 

PicoP does NOT have this problem. The ecosystem for PicoP is ready to go. Adoption can be instant. 

Don't think that the OEMS that SONY will be selling components to don't know that. PicoP can immediately increase the utility of a mobile device dramatically. 

One of the many reasons I'm very optimistic.


Trying to make VR hardware irrelevant

Google is taking on a chicken-and-egg problem common to any company trying to establish itself as the middleman in a new marketplace. Consumers won’t buy into virtual reality unless there’s something to experience; content companies won’t provide it without a ready audience. “The only way to get around it is to subsidize one side of the market,” says Michael Cusumano, a management professor at MIT who has studied how software and consumer electronics companies conjure up new businesses. “Give away 3-D viewers, or pay software developers to create applications or other content.” Facebook is trying to fill the content gap by hosting 360-degree video as YouTube does, partnering with content companies such as Netflix, and building an in-house production effort called Oculus Story Studio. Google is effectively subsidizing both sides of the market. By making handsets more or less for free out of devices we already own, it’s offering its content partners a potentially much larger audience.

Facebook working on Augmented Reality

This is interesting.

If Facebook is working on AR as well, then Microvision could be very interesting to them in a number of ways.

MicroVision is the leader in Augmented Reality Patents.

Facebook Scooped up Oculus Rift for 2 Billion dollars about 18 months ago. I think MicroVision has far more to offer than Oculus. (MicroVision at a 2 Billion market cap is $40+/share) 

Which is more valuable? A headset that isolates you and makes you nauseous with low-resolution video, or a portable projector component technology & the biggest portfolio of augmented reality patents?

MICROVISION AR PATENTS


ItProPortal

Facebook is not only working on virtual reality, but on augmented reality, as well. The news was confirmed by the company’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg during the recently held Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit in San Francisco.

During the summit, Zuckerberg explained the difference between virtual and augmented reality. While VR, a technology that’s just around the corner, enables the user to experience completely new surroundings, ones which might be at the other part of the globe, AR helps the user better connect to the world around him.

You could walk down the street and see how many likes a business has, or how many people signed up for an event. „What Facebook is, is a way to give people a voice to share anything that they want in any form of medium with any audience they want,” TechCrunch cites Zuckerberg.