Ready Player One....UPDATED

“What’s really astounding to me is a lot of the guys at Oculus VR and other companies who were creating VR tell me that Ready Player One is one of their primary inspirations in getting into virtual reality,” Cline says. “I’ve been to Oculus a few times to do book signings and things there and they tell me Ready Player One is like required reading for new employees.

Opens Wednesday March 28....

Fortune

From Ready Player One:

"The wireless one-size-fits-all OASIS visor was slightly larger than a pair of sunglasses. It used harmless low-powered lasers to draw the stunningly real environment of the OASIS right onto the wearer's retinas, completely immersing their entire field of vision in the online world. The visor was light-years ahead of the clunky virtual-reality reality goggles available prior to that time...."

Facebook AR Hub
Oculus Careers




Microvision Retinal Scanning Display

Patents

http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2018/03/apples-in-depth-work-on-a-next-gen-mixed-reality-headset-is-simply-mind-boggling-in-scope.html#more

Excerpts: Apple's invention relates to a mixed reality system that may include a mixed reality device such as a headset, helmet, goggles, or glasses (referred to herein as a head-mounted display (HMD)) that includes a projector mechanism for projecting or displaying frames including left and right images to a user's eyes to thus provide 3D virtual views to the user.

The 3D virtual views may include views of the user's environment augmented with virtual content (e.g., virtual objects, virtual tags, etc.).

The mixed reality system may include world-facing sensors that collect information about the user's environment (e.g., video, depth information, lighting information, etc.), and user-facing sensors that collect information about the user (e.g., the user's expressions, eye movement, hand gestures, etc.).

In some embodiments, the world sensors may include one or more "video see through" cameras (e.g., RGB (visible light) cameras) that capture high-quality views of the user's environment that may be used to provide the user with a virtual view of their real environment.

In some embodiments, the world sensors may include one or more world mapping sensors (e.g., infrared (IR) cameras with an IR illumination source, or Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) emitters and receivers/detectors) that, for example, capture depth or range information for the user's environment. In some embodiments, the world sensors may include one or more "head pose" sensors (e.g., IR or RGB cameras) that may capture information about the user's position, orientation, and motion in the environment; this information may, for example, be used to augment information collected by an inertial-measurement unit (IMU) of the HMD.

The HMD may implement any of various types of virtual reality projection technologies such as a near-eye VR system that projects left and right images on screens in front of the user's eyes that are viewed by a subject, such as DLP (digital light processing), LCD (liquid crystal display) and LCoS (liquid crystal on silicon) technology VR systems.

As another example, the HMD may be a direct retinal projector system that scans left and right images, pixel by pixel, to the subject's eyes. To scan the images, left and right projectors generate beams that are directed to left and right reflective components (e.g., ellipsoid mirrors) located in front of the user's eyes; the reflective components reflect the beams to the user's eyes.

Thanks R!

Forget the glasses

Hustled off to visit a friend this morning before I got done reading my alerts.

This one showed up when I resumed reading this afternoon.

A decent summary of what is going on in augmented reality -- and a nice mention of Microvision.



Spectrum.ieee

Also in the AR-heavy category, and already shipping to developers and some business customers, is Microsoft’s $3,000 HoloLens, an AR headset with all its necessary computing performed on board. The trade-off Microsoft made to make this technology portable is in its field of view: At less than 45 degrees, it’s like looking through a small window. One of Microsoft’s competitors, Meta, is taking preorders from developers for a $950 headset with a 90-degree field of view—but the Meta headset requires tethering to an external computer to operate. Both project images outward, not directly on your retina, as Magic Leap is expected to do. But Magic Leap may not end up being the only AR retina display out there. Kartik Hosanagar, professor of technology and digital business at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, says he believes that MicroVision, a pioneer in retina displays, may move into commercial augmented reality.