When Valve's first hardware hire, Jeri Ellsworth, tweeted back in February that she was fired from the company, we were disappointed but also intrigued by what she meant by "time for new exciting projects." Well we finally saw what she's been up to here at at Maker Faire 2013. It's called Cast AR, and it's a pair of 3D augmented-reality glasses that she and former Valve programmer Rick Johnson were working on at Valve before they left.
The model we saw is still in the early prototype stages, but the concepts are already in place. Perched atop a pair of active shutter glasses are a couple of miniature LCD projectors, which bounce images from a connected computer onto a special reflective surface at a 120Hz refresh rate. A camera module sits on the eyewear's bridge and monitors an array of infrared LEDs embedded in the reflective surface. This allows for quick and accurate head tracking. Join us after the break for our impressions and stay tuned for a video interview with Jeri Ellsworth.
Unlike VR goggles like the Oculus Rift, putting on the Cast AR doesn't cocoon you in another world. Even though we were immersed in a full 3D environment, we could still see our surroundings and what was in front of us. We interacted with a variety of environments, from a flying tour over a digital landscape to shooting up zombies with hooked up Xbox controllers. We also waved a LED-equipped wand around to throw a wrecking ball into a Jenga-style tower. Even as we bobbed and weaved, not once did we feel nauseous or disoriented.
Under their new company called Technical Illusions, Ellsworth plans to bring Cast AR from prototype to finished product. Ellsworth told us they plan on creating a Kickstarter later this year to help fund the project, and they've already created a mock-up of what they hope the final item will look like. She hopes to sell the whole kit -- the glasses, the wand accessory and the required reflective surface -- for under $200.
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