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.