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But in space, weight isn't an issue

It's less of an issue, but inertia will still cause the device to resist turning your head -- or stop turning your neck.

I'd rather have a crick in my neck than a broken neck because some zombie jump-scared me into twisting my head right off.

Actually, I'd rather just use the VR and AR gear I already have been using for years, since they are portable, work with my phone and look like a pair of sunglasses.

You mean like these?

http://www.vuzix.com/consumer/ (I have one of these.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Or any of these?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Hell even the Virtual Boy infringes on this, just looking at the patent abstract United States Patent 8,957,835 : http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi...

Nice captcha: varyings

Translation: "This is how you advertise a product as elitist." or "Shh, mobile enabled VR & AR gear does not exist yet!"

Sorry, don't care Google. I'll just keep developing for the 3D VR and AR gear I already use daily with my smart-phone, rather than pay for the over-priced less capable system Google's selling. When Google finally gets around to pushing out a run of hardware that is publicly accessible then I might port some software I personally use in my business to the platform it if it's not completely shit, and there is a market share to warrant the expenditure. I'm not holding my breath for something that is little more than vapor-ware.

Besides, that initial rejection of 3rd party apps for glass really turned me off, it seems they got the message but it doesn't bode well. Will I be able to use Glass apps with the Oculus Rift, or MS or Sony's offering, or Vuzix or True Player Gear, or the other umpteen hundred VR and AR headsets, many of which I've been using since the 90's when Quake and Descent came out, which STILL didn't attract a market? I don't think hardware should be tied to software, or that software should be tied to hardware needlessly. If that's the route Google wants then they can go fuck themselves. I already have AR and VR headsets for Android, and they work with iOS, Linux and Windows too.

Release a product or don't. This carrot dangling makes the Glass team seem like a bunch of incompetent self-important elitist sperglords.

Wow, that's neat, can I buy it and add to my existing collection of VR and AR gear I've been using since Quake and Descent came out about two decades ago?

I mean, I have mobile ready VR already, it's pretty cool, and doesn't have to look like I've strapped a toaster to my face... That high resolution is nifty, but how is it on battery life? That's the main thing for me, FoV isn't really that big of a deal since most receptors are concentrated in the center of your visual field anyway. Also, in my albeit limited studies, it's not lag-time but difference between visual and inner-ear inputs that primarily induces motion sickness, so any

I really do hope VR succeeds in the general public this time around. There really isn't much in the way of good 3DUI experiences, so I've been doing some 3D experiments in input / output. I love having a full 360 degree desktop full of text terminals, documentation, issue trackers, tool-bars, palettes, actor models, and widgets off to the side and out of the way of the workspace, etc. Unfortunately, I have discovered that with combinations of two or more [accelerometer | compass | head tracking | eye tracking] I can achieve a different yet cheaper, less strain inducing, nearly as immersive, and somewhat similar feature set to what VR provides, but using any standard 2D screen -- they become 3D viewports into a virtual landscape. Lean in and tilt the head slightly to view surrounding workspaces, combinations of vocal, keyboard, mouse, and eye blink / motion for intuitive (yet easily controllable) focus acceleration and action input, etc. Even my grandma was surprised and grinning saying, "Oh wow, I can actually use this. It's like an actual window. Why isn't this on my TV right now?" So, I think AI + cameras embedded in our devices will be strong competition for the VR market.

IMO, it is Augmented Reality (AR) that's really exciting. However, just like VR, there isn't much in the way of good UI design, and the wearable AR tech is still as expensive and clunky as the UI research itself remains... I have experimented with some brain-blowing concepts when combining my active display UI designs with wearable AR UI, but it makes some of my friends and family instantly puke -- unlike the active display itself, which doesn't induce nausea because it mimics something we're all familiar with, and aligns itself with our perception expectations by augmenting reality instead of enforcing a virtual reality. In other words, AR is not just for goggles anymore, and it's already better than VR in terms of IO ROI and monetary ROI, IMO, but YMMV w/ VR vs AR.

TL;DR: VR is still cool but gimmicky hype that's soon to be obsolete before it even gets off the ground, unfortunately.

Pioneers? I've already got VR. Had it since Quake and Descent came out in the 90's. Who wants to strap a toaster to their face when they can have VR glasses that look like glasses and work on the go from their smartphones?

If it was such a big deal, the existing VR companies would already be improving on latency and price by leaps and bounds on their own over the two decades we've had consumer VR gear. It's just not that big a deal, you're still just feeding images to a brain, I don't understand the hype; See also: Kinect hype.

It's AR (augmented reality) that I find so much more beneficial and useful. I have been using AR in industrial noise abatement. We set up our sound monitors, then triangulate audio sources, and then we can overlay them on world as 3D volumetric data using AR. From my android tablet I can even use a high/low pass filter to isolate a particular noise signature and locate its visual source via timestamp and pattern recognition to see exactly where it's coming from, and how frequently it occurred in the sample timeline. This way we can safely diagnose problem noise sources while the dangerous machinery is not in use.

Sorry, I couldn't wait a decade for game consoles to finally get over VirtualBoy. I had work to do with VR / AR. Hell, I only use my monitors about half the time anymore since VR + 3D UI = 360 degree desktop - Turn my head and I've got screens as far as the eye can see, and more. You can hack together a poor man's version with Compize's Desktop Zoom by setting the head tracking to move the mouse cursor, but really you want the panning to follow head tracking while mouse controls the pointer.

The biggest problem for VR is 3D UI, I've done some experimental research, but it's not there yet. With AR and the Kinect I've played around with using the poor-man's head = mouse cursor for zoom / panning and depth cameras for emulating touch events. It's too sloppy for precision work with gen1 Kinect, but I can make touch emulation work pretty well with OpenCV and a decent webcam (a bit better than what you find embedded in a laptop nowadays). However, many people get motion sick from the glasses, and latency's not an issue, it happens even when passively watching 3D movie theaters, glasses can't change your inner ear's sense of movement and balance, yet.

For common use 3D UI I'm really liking head tracking without the VR display, and using a standard monitor instead. When combined with eye tracking. I can emulate a very immersive 3D viewport that really feels like a window. You can tilt to view "deeper" or "around" other objects, lean to see the next workspace, and double-blink-to click, largely eliminating mouse use replacing it with fast and rich eye+keyboard navigation. Look to move pointer, ctrl+blink to set "intermediary focus mode", sort of a visual analog to focus change via tabbing like hover to focus, but with another key or blink to actually focus instead of dwell-clicking. Double-blink does a best guess as to what button is nearest the cursor. For Firefox I had to write a simple plugin for the UI system.

Anyhow, business doesn't care about this shit. Most folks don't even want to learn a better keylayout that the purposefully fucked QWERTY, let alone a new way to mouse with their eyes and head. They can already telepresence with their smart phones, laptops and desktops, 3D isn't a huge improvement for most folks it's a gimmick (like adding video to a phone voice chat is -- protip: people would rather text that talk unless they're really horny).

If the Oculus Devs are "pioneers", then every day users of VR, AR and 3D interface hobbyists like me must be like ancient aliens who visited VR planet when it was primordial ooze. Shit, I was playing Dactyl Nightmare and Exorex in VR at the arcade the year before Carmack's Doom even came out.

The comments of Abusive Fans break upon my hardened exoskeleton and run from its glistening laser-proof hydrophobic exterior like water from a duck. Where some see the unintelligible rage irrational, I value even the most outrageous of critique. You see, the unrefined individuals are like apes: Not able to speak the evolved language of mechanic design, plot pacing, etc., they hoot, holler and sling excrement instead. Hidden within are kernels of truth, like corn. It is a vile deed to dissect the primitive outbursts and translate them into terms of creative construction, but if you can do this, then you will see at least why they are so revolting. To me it is valuable input -- Another disgusting part of how the sausage gets made.

My advice would be, if you're not already making games then you may not be cut out for making games. For instance: As a kid did you ever make your own board game? Eg: bend a paper clip in a T for a base and use paper cut-outs for custom table-top insurgency, or to add a new unit to an existing game... draw new levels for platformers and play them using strings to measure jump limits, or something similar? You see, it's easy to turn the desire to design games into actual games, but you must be committed enough to do so.

When I first saw an arcade game I was amazed: I too wanted to know how they did that! I had to harness that power. I got my first PC, there was no Internet or books on coding in my library (especially not game making), and still no one could keep me from teaching myself to program and make games while other kids were still learning their multiplication tables. Contrast this with the recent vocal ragequitter: Phil Fish. He loved designing games, but did not have the drive enough to learn how to make them without relying on others to do so. A very frustrating position to be in, especially if you are outwardly abrasive.

Nowadays there are free game engines, and hardware is so fast you don't have to do freaky things like execute assembly code in the frame buffer to pull off smooth scrolling... Nowadays every child has free tutorials, free instructions, free compilers (a C compiler cost me half a hundred mowed lawns), even free game assets.

It's not so much a career path as an inherent component of life, to most gamedevs I know -- Drop them in a wilderness for a few weeks and there will be a new stategy game in the sand made of sticks and stones; Their starved body will be guarding the charcoal rule set scratched on tree bark, and they'll refuse to be rescued unless they can take the game with them. The point is, they didn't just decide to try making games at some point in their college life, or after winning a government grant (like Fish) -- Instead, no one could ever stop them from making games.

So, unless you're TRULY, and I mean TRULY in love with making games, I would actually advise against it. It's hard thankless tedious work and it's only the love for game making that makes it seem rewarding. You'll make far more money coding in almost any other field, the hours will be better, the work will be easier too -- You can even do many things game devs do without making games, and it'll be a better job: I did acoustical engineering and noise abatement, got to play with mapping 3D stuff with microphones and real life shotgun-shell cannons for echo-location noise generators, overlay sound maps to spot noise problems in factories in real time with a ultra-portable PC and 3D augmented reality glasses. The tech was cool, way more pay, but left no time for making games, so I quit; Now that's sick!

Even the most capable, experienced and creative folks become empty burned out husks giving birth to a game. Only a severe mental-condition lets them brave harshest of criticism from everyone else in life, and makes them enjoy making games above almost all else; That perverse love of creati

Of course my very first PC games ran in CGA, and I thought VGA was a huge step up. But at no time have I ever thought to myself "Nope, more wouldn't be better". Not when it comes to graphics, RAM, harddrive size, etc. Give me more and I'll use it.

As a game programmer I have to say, pushing pixels is damn expensive. I make my 3D data visualization software and games resolution independent (because, why not?) but some AAA game devs don't (not in the budget). That means when you get a higher resolution monitor and throw more pixels on the screen your UI text can shrink. Oh, just scale them up? Yep, then what's the point more pixels if you're just going to upscale the textures?

I've done some experimenting with fractal & procedural generation to make near infinitely detailed textures and geometry, but the LOD system can get in the way of the game play, and the starved AI budget (only 1% to 2% of RAM / CPU -- which is why your games have dumb bots: Every drop of power goes to pushing more pixels and ragdoll limbs). Look at something up close, then spin around and watch the world's textures go from blurry to detailed again since you ran out of RAM and had a cache miss.

It's getting better, but pixel fill rate really does eat up the GPU time for little to no significant gameplay or graphical detail increase at this point; In fact it prevents better gameplay in many respects: Good AI takes more RAM... It's sinful to mention Game AI in the same breath as Neural Nets, but the stupid thing is that they are embarrassingly parallel and thus run BEAUTIFULLY on the GPU hardware -- if we could just budget some of it for AI... Nope, gotta please the pixel pixies. If you're sitting more than a few feet away or the screen is animating then it's effectively blurring the pixels, depending on the pixel response times. A game where you slowly crawl along the walls and stare at stuff like the OCD "godspoken" girl in that Ender's Game book (Children of the Mind?), you would really notice the detail on them textures, boy let me tell ya! However, for a high percentage of the games out there where things move on the screen, 4K or 8X is pretty much pointless -- You can't see that well either, i.e, your retinas have response times too...

Many games do per pixel lighting on all those triangles -- Even the triangles getting obscured by the next triangle drawn in front of it, because calculating partial obscurity, subdividing surfaces and sorting every triangle is slow... So, you don't have to just worry about the pixels on your screen that need to get drawn, but all the ones we drew first that frame that got covered up by stuff in front... So, better make sure you have a hefty GPU even for playing crappy older games, because fill rate's a bitch. 4096 x 2160 = 8,847,360 pixels. 1920 x 1080 = 2,073,600. See how area scales? Twice the apparent resolution is Four times the number of pixels we need to push... When you factor in over-draw from overlapping triangles it's even worse.

There is such a pixels per inch that is "good enough", and it's already been reached. Bigger screens are still better, but the human vision system can contain only so much field of view at once. Instead, I use AR glasses in some of my work (clipping point-cloud data over a scale model in real time is faster than importing an autocad file), and some VR glasses work with smart phones. I think that's where we should be trying to focus more pixels -- put the screens in our eyes and the whole world is covered, with screens you have to cover the entire room, that scales horribly. If they can get the clumsy and awkward form factor of something like the Oculus Rift down into the comfy Vuzix frames, then that would be amazing -- Hasn't happened yet though.

In any event, I doubt you'll notice the improved fidelity when you're dod

Of course my very first PC games ran in CGA, and I thought VGA was a huge step up. But at no time have I ever thought to myself "Nope, more wouldn't be better". Not when it comes to graphics, RAM, harddrive size, etc. Give me more and I'll use it.

As a game programmer I have to say, pushing pixels is damn expensive. I make my 3D data visualization software and games resolution independent (because, why not?) but some AAA game devs don't (not in the budget). That means when you get a higher resolution monitor and throw more pixels on the screen your UI text can shrink. Oh, just scale them up? Yep, then what's the point more pixels if you're just going to upscale the textures?

I've done some experimenting with fractal & procedural generation to make near infinitely detailed textures and geometry, but the LOD system can get in the way of the game play, and the starved AI budget (only 1% to 2% of RAM / CPU -- which is why your games have dumb bots: Every drop of power goes to pushing more pixels and ragdoll limbs). Look at something up close, then spin around and watch the world's textures go from blurry to detailed again since you ran out of RAM and had a cache miss.

It's getting better, but pixel fill rate really does eat up the GPU time for little to no significant gameplay or graphical detail increase at this point; In fact it prevents better gameplay in many respects: Good AI takes more RAM... It's sinful to mention Game AI in the same breath as Neural Nets, but the stupid thing is that they are embarrassingly parallel and thus run BEAUTIFULLY on the GPU hardware -- if we could just budget some of it for AI... Nope, gotta please the pixel pixies. If you're sitting more than a few feet away or the screen is animating then it's effectively blurring the pixels, depending on the pixel response times. A game where you slowly crawl along the walls and stare at stuff like the OCD "godspoken" girl in that Ender's Game book (Children of the Mind?), you would really notice the detail on them textures, boy let me tell ya! However, for a high percentage of the games out there where things move on the screen, 4K or 8X is pretty much pointless -- You can't see that well either, i.e, your retinas have response times too...

Many games do per pixel lighting on all those triangles -- Even the triangles getting obscured by the next triangle drawn in front of it, because calculating partial obscurity, subdividing surfaces and sorting every triangle is slow... So, you don't have to just worry about the pixels on your screen that need to get drawn, but all the ones we drew first that frame that got covered up by stuff in front... So, better make sure you have a hefty GPU even for playing crappy older games, because fill rate's a bitch. 4096 x 2160 = 8,847,360 pixels. 1920 x 1080 = 2,073,600. See how area scales? Twice the apparent resolution is Four times the number of pixels we need to push... When you factor in over-draw from overlapping triangles it's even worse.

There is such a pixels per inch that is "good enough", and it's already been reached. Bigger screens are still better, but the human vision system can contain only so much field of view at once. Instead, I use AR glasses in some of my work (clipping point-cloud data over a scale model in real time is faster than importing an autocad file), and some VR glasses work with smart phones. I think that's where we should be trying to focus more pixels -- put the screens in our eyes and the whole world is covered, with screens you have to cover the entire room, that scales horribly. If they can get the clumsy and awkward form factor of something like the Oculus Rift down into the comfy Vuzix frames, then that would be amazing -- Hasn't happened yet though.

In any event, I doubt you'll notice the improved fidelity when you're dod

Here you go

Vuzix

And they are cheaper depending on what you want/need

Why are you people still talking about glass. this stuff has been around for a while. go look at Vuzix. I have a pair of early generation 2nd I think, that display a screen equivalent to a 60" screen at 6 feet away. Hooked it up to my XBOX and played Ace Combat, it was the best and worst game I have tried, I almost fell over because I was trying to "look" by moving my head and not the stick. just integrate them and you have AR that is worth it. plus they actually have a battery life that can get you through a movie or two.

It will be great if you enjoy strapping a computer to your back and wearing a big ass, heavy helmet with wires everywhere and two joysticks instead of gloves.

Oh and the graphics looked like something from the late 80s DOS PC era.

Yeah, fortunately for me, that's not what my VR Rig looks like.

Mine looks like sun glasses with ear-buds and they can hook up to my smart phone when on the go. Wearing them looks like watching a big 3D (70 inch or so) TV. The 90's came, and so did VR games like Exorex, Dactyl Nightmare, Descent, Quake, etc. The funny thing is that the old Descent game works great on my 3D TV (though I think that 3D TVs are a dead end -- If you need glasses for 3D then you can just put screens in them and take 'em with you). VR never died the first time around, it just wasn't widely adopted. Specialists and Hobbyists still use VR just like back in the 90's: In my last job before I became independent I did sound surveying for industrial noise abatement and I used to use my portable alternate reality glasses, and a custom smartphone app in factories to visualize the 3D sound samplings in real time safely, i.e., while the machines were turned off I could still "see" where the noise had been coming from (that the monitors had previously recorded and our software had turned into 3D volumetric data).

Occulus Rift? Meh, whatever. That'll stay niche if you ask me. Light-weight transparent OLED 3D 'sun glasses', w/ optional flip up light-shields for toggling between AR and VR are the future form factor of head mounted displays... A similar form factor already exists, and I play existing games like Quake 4 and Descent 2 with them all the time (I'm even experimenting with adding a VT101 terminal emulation to my game engine's 3D GUI so I can code in VR -- Imagine it, everywhere you look is screenspace -- API docs? Just turn your head, no need for a wall of screens). I still use VR headgear, but I stopped strapping my head into a bucket with screens a decade ago and I'm not going back. Those who like VR don't have to wait for this Project Holodeck. Also, Games? That's all they can think of to use VR with?

vortexcortex@hivemind:~/vr-vim/build/$ make hacker-movies-jealous

It will be great if you enjoy strapping a computer to your back and wearing a big ass, heavy helmet with wires everywhere and two joysticks instead of gloves.

Oh and the graphics looked like something from the late 80s DOS PC era.

Yeah, fortunately for me, that's not what my VR Rig looks like.

Mine looks like sun glasses with ear-buds and they can hook up to my smart phone when on the go. Wearing them looks like watching a big 3D (70 inch or so) TV. The 90's came, and so did VR games like Exorex, Dactyl Nightmare, Descent, Quake, etc. The funny thing is that the old Descent game works great on my 3D TV (though I think that 3D TVs are a dead end -- If you need glasses for 3D then you can just put screens in them and take 'em with you). VR never died the first time around, it just wasn't widely adopted. Specialists and Hobbyists still use VR just like back in the 90's: In my last job before I became independent I did sound surveying for industrial noise abatement and I used to use my portable alternate reality glasses, and a custom smartphone app in factories to visualize the 3D sound samplings in real time safely, i.e., while the machines were turned off I could still "see" where the noise had been coming from (that the monitors had previously recorded and our software had turned into 3D volumetric data).

Occulus Rift? Meh, whatever. That'll stay niche if you ask me. Light-weight transparent OLED 3D 'sun glasses', w/ optional flip up light-shields for toggling between AR and VR are the future form factor of head mounted displays... A similar form factor already exists, and I play existing games like Quake 4 and Descent 2 with them all the time (I'm even experimenting with adding a VT101 terminal emulation to my game engine's 3D GUI so I can code in VR -- Imagine it, everywhere you look is screenspace -- API docs? Just turn your head, no need for a wall of screens). I still use VR headgear, but I stopped strapping my head into a bucket with screens a decade ago and I'm not going back. Those who like VR don't have to wait for this Project Holodeck. Also, Games? That's all they can think of to use VR with?

vortexcortex@hivemind:~/vr-vim/build/$ make hacker-movies-jealous

I've been using AR glasses with my smart phone for YEARS.
It's often times faster to overlay the 3D noise source map (gathered from sensors in the field) over the readily available physical model -- Depth culling to remove obscured sources in real time (industrial noise abatement). Sometimes it's faster if the CAD files can be imported easily, to just do it digitally, even so, I can just turn off the cameras. I rarely used my phone when doing this sort of work, but I have done so. I've used it experimentally in the field to visualize the pre-recorded 3D noise volumes in real time walking (while all the equipment is safely turned off). It's safer and sometimes faster because it skips the step of constructing a 3D model of the environment.

No longer work in that field, but I now do some game development on the side, and I've found craploads of uses for AR in game dev... Overlay a wireframe of the scanned object to the real 3D clay model, correct minor defects, add wrinkle details, seams and screws and bolts. It's sort of like the modern equivalent of a painter working on a portrait with a live model. If the cameras didn't make me look silly (or pervy) I'd wear them in public to do "Google Glass" right now.

I abstain from reading any patents if I can. I hope MS's new patent is properly limited so that it doesn't PREVENT EXISTING USES OF AUGMENTED REALITY. No, really, just end all patents. This is retarding.

The state of the art at the moment seems to be this device if you're interested on the subject.

Yes, but there are other models that don't make you look like a retard. They even work with your smart phone. I use the 920AR (Altered Reality) version, it has two dorky looking cameras on the front and the screens aren't as large, but it's lightweight and looks nicer than huge honking device.

Considering that I've been using something like "Google Glasses" for years, I figured they'd have their crap together and on the market by now...

The state of the art at the moment seems to be this device if you're interested on the subject.

Yes, but there are other models that don't make you look like a retard. They even work with your smart phone. I use the 920AR (Altered Reality) version, it has two dorky looking cameras on the front and the screens aren't as large, but it's lightweight and looks nicer than huge honking device.

Considering that I've been using something like "Google Glasses" for years, I figured they'd have their crap together and on the market by now...

Forget the projector. Does anyone make glasses with a suitable HUD?

I Googled and found Vuzix. These appear to be designed mainly for video use, so the resolution might not be great. But if you are going to be projecting an image on any old surface, how much worse can these be?

I have tested NVIDIA 3D technology with some games at it's awesome! The effect is even more real because you are actually interracting with the world. For example Left4Dead is great with 3D glasses. Now we just need more support from game developers.

What you want is not a 3D TV, but a Head Mounted Displays.

Right now, the best one does 720p@60Hz for 3D, not good enough. But I bet in 1 year this will be the next hot stuff to own.

Here is the list of the best one:

Sony Personal 3d viewer:

http://store.sony.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&categoryId=8198552921644817998#overview/hd

Wrap 1200VR:

http://www.vuzix.com/consumer/products_wrap_1200vr.html#features

and ST1080:

http://www.siliconmicrodisplay.com/st1080.html

Take a look at this http://www.vuzix.com/consumer/products_vr920.html . I've heard there is a linux driver available too.

What, no more iDweeb wires-into-ears look?

Actually, no, I upgraded from those a long time ago.
You people can call me a tool all you want -- I can explode your heads revealing the underlying talking anuses with my altered reality...

What, no more iDweeb wires-into-ears look?

Actually, no, I upgraded from those a long time ago.
You people can call me a tool all you want -- I can explode your heads revealing the underlying talking anuses with my altered reality...

In unrelated news, Steve Jobs says that no-one wanted a tablet PC, then announced the iPad.

Personally, I'd much rather have 1080p or better per eye in my portable VR goggles, the best I've purchased (without building my own from used Android phones) is 640x480 per eye, tried a few 852x480 or better but I'm waiting for the price to drop a bit.

Follow each tech to it's logical conclusion: Getting the screen bigger and farther away will become impractical -- I'd rather head the other direction and place the high res screens in/near my eyes.

A 360 degree 3D surround setup, with head tracking is very costly (more than some houses); When the next new hotness comes out you replace all the expensive projectors or screens to get better resolution. The 3D environment is stationary (unless it's in a mobile home).

High res VR goggles are very light-weight now, the prices are affordable as an unlocked "smart-phone", and the contrast ratio and luminescence are good; Some VR visors are even designed to connect to your mobile computer/phone, ergo: Portable.

Follow the 3D screen tech far into the future and you've got a 3D display on every surface and remote 24/7 location and head tracking... Or, use the current VR goggle tech and you've got a 3D display over every surface with a private accelerometer/gyroscope for head tracking, and private screens for viewing mobile altered reality. Follow VR far enough -- smaller screens with higher resolutions close to the eyes, and you've got cybernetic ocular implants (which can enable the blind to see -- in 3D HD! heh).

It's fun to watch everyone either waiting to or scrambling to jump on the 3D bandwagon I've been riding since the 90s, them with these huge ugly screens; Come sit next to me, I'm the one holding the "smart-phone" and wearing the high-tech glasses.

As for games? IMO, nothing beats VR headsets in the immersion department. Since I played Descent in '95 I've been hooked on VR.

In unrelated news, Steve Jobs says that no-one wanted a tablet PC, then announced the iPad.

Personally, I'd much rather have 1080p or better per eye in my portable VR goggles, the best I've purchased (without building my own from used Android phones) is 640x480 per eye, tried a few 852x480 or better but I'm waiting for the price to drop a bit.

Follow each tech to it's logical conclusion: Getting the screen bigger and farther away will become impractical -- I'd rather head the other direction and place the high res screens in/near my eyes.

A 360 degree 3D surround setup, with head tracking is very costly (more than some houses); When the next new hotness comes out you replace all the expensive projectors or screens to get better resolution. The 3D environment is stationary (unless it's in a mobile home).

High res VR goggles are very light-weight now, the prices are affordable as an unlocked "smart-phone", and the contrast ratio and luminescence are good; Some VR visors are even designed to connect to your mobile computer/phone, ergo: Portable.

Follow the 3D screen tech far into the future and you've got a 3D display on every surface and remote 24/7 location and head tracking... Or, use the current VR goggle tech and you've got a 3D display over every surface with a private accelerometer/gyroscope for head tracking, and private screens for viewing mobile altered reality. Follow VR far enough -- smaller screens with higher resolutions close to the eyes, and you've got cybernetic ocular implants (which can enable the blind to see -- in 3D HD! heh).

It's fun to watch everyone either waiting to or scrambling to jump on the 3D bandwagon I've been riding since the 90s, them with these huge ugly screens; Come sit next to me, I'm the one holding the "smart-phone" and wearing the high-tech glasses.

As for games? IMO, nothing beats VR headsets in the immersion department. Since I played Descent in '95 I've been hooked on VR.

Actually, looking at games like Crysis, I realize that in term of pixels, we reached a point where we don't actually need more pixels unless we want much bigger displays. Personally, I don't care much for resolutions like 4K x 2K, but I would really like to see full HD wearable displays like Vuzix Wrap 920 but with higher resolutions.

I think all of us could claim to have experienced virtual reality at home. Just not with clunky glasses from the 80s, but congratulations in making an expensive new phone into your very own pair of 80s fail.

I personally own a pair of these: http://www.vuzix.com/iwear/products_vr920.html they're exactly what they claim to be, and work just as well. Shame that the technology hasn't made the concept much better over the years. The problem is simply that trying to trick the human vision system is really hard. Doing it in an affordable way is even harder.

http://www.vuzix.com/iwear/products_wrap310.html

Available right now for under $250. Also one of the only head mounted augmented reality systems that is commercially available today.

When you have toy like this or somesuch, then you do not need a regular screen. A screenless laptop plus wearable display seems to me a nice solution for mobile computing. Of course the laptop should have a battery life of 8h then. Which should actually be easy, because I would expect those display goggles to use less power than a regular screen.

As a side note: for tall people like me this would be kind of ideal for computing in an airplane. Unless I'm in an exit row or bulk head seat there is no way I can see my regular laptop screen. With display goggles that problem is completely solved.

IIRC the more prominent issue for eye strain is focusing on something so close for a long period of time.

I've read that while many people blame the light on computer screens for their eye strain, it could be rectified if they just looked out the window at regular intervals.



Anecdotally, I've looked at computer screens for long periods of times all my life, and many, many people have made comments about how my eyes must hurt. But they never did. I read that article and realised that I look around all the time, usually when I'm thinking. And I've also always set up computers near windows.

I'm not saying light plays no factor. But I think the main issue with HMD is you're looking at something 2cm away from your eye all the time. Since the glasses linked in the question "don't block out the world around you", I'm guessing they'll cause a lot less eye strain, since your eyes could be constantly refocusing on the outside world.

There's more going on here than a simple drop in sales due to the current economic climate. The last desktop PC I bought (just over a year ago) was the last PC I will buy. There was a time when a computer was a thing that filled a room, then it filled a single rack, then a desktop box. We are (over)due for the next paradigm shift which will be to small mobile devices. My next computing device will be a Pandora, coupled with a head mounted display. Finally we will be free of the Wintel stranglehold that has been dominant for the past couple of decades.

... However, no affordable, high resolution headsets are available on the market today. (and when I say affordable, I mean for any reasonable price. You cannot get a high resolution head mounted display for even $2000)

Depends on what you consider to be 'high-resolution' for a head mounted display. The Vuzix iWear VR920 boasts dual 640x480 displays and 3DOF head tracking for $400 US. Add a Wiimote to the mix and you can get 6DOF head tracking for $450 + some time getting it all to work together. That's not to shabby when compared to the $2000+ pro-headsets or say a $15,000+ tactical HUD visor :)

... However, no affordable, high resolution headsets are available on the market today. (and when I say affordable, I mean for any reasonable price. You cannot get a high resolution head mounted display for even $2000)

Depends on what you consider to be 'high-resolution' for a head mounted display. The Vuzix iWear VR920 boasts dual 640x480 displays and 3DOF head tracking for $400 US. Add a Wiimote to the mix and you can get 6DOF head tracking for $450 + some time getting it all to work together. That's not to shabby when compared to the $2000+ pro-headsets or say a $15,000+ tactical HUD visor :)

As someone who actually owns a VR headset (two 640x480 displays and head tracking) I can tell you that the problem isn't motion sickness. The problem is that the displays are not immersive enough. They make no secret of this... people, like me, just prefer not to acknowledge they know what they're getting.. "equivalent to a 62-inch screen at 9 feet." And that's really true. When you put it on you really do see a big monitor on the other side of the room.. a big black room. When you look up, or down, you see the real world.. so you try not to do that. I got the little "Immersive Eyeshield".. so when you look up, or down, you don't see the real world, you see more black. So, as fucking awesome as the VR920 is, for the price, it doesn't put me in the virtual world. In order to do that I guess they need some sort of curved display that covers all the viewing angles of my eyes. I don't know if you need any eye tracking, but it'd be good if you could I bet.

One thing the NIA won't let you do is control mouse movements; the software only supports binding inputs to keystrokes. Since the "glance" meter only tracks the X axis to begin with, I doubt the NIA would be a useful mouse replacement even if OCZ implemented such a feature. You'll still have to use a good old mouse to look around in first-person shooters.

Seeing that at the end of the article almost nixed it for me... until I remembered seeing this recently and now wish I had the extra cash to see if it IS possible to use them in conjunction...

Not 100% what you're after, but I got to check out Vuzix video eyeware at GDC this year. I think they say their gaming glasses are the equivalent of a 50" screen at 9 feet or something (I don't recall the numbers very well because I'm on the metric system and my brain turns out when people use those ye olde terms).

I tried the glasses in two games - Call of Duty 4 and Flight Simulator X. Both have pretty impressive magic 3d technology where everything gets a nice 3d style.

The glasses for FSX also supported head movements - so I could (for eg) turn my head around and see the tail of my plane, and look up and down around the plane. The movement stuff was pretty quick and responsive.

Visually it was good, not great. I don't know if its good enough for me to shell out money for it. My main issues:

- the image had a bit of flicker that was distracting

- the colours seemed a little washed out - might've just been settings

- the image _seemed_ really small. This was an interesting one - when I put on the glasses, I thought "shit, that's a tiny screen" - but when I thought about it and imagined projecting the same size screen onto a wall in front of me, its actually a pretty big size. I think it just looks smaller because the glasses don't completely cover your eyes - so I could see a heap of stuff in my peripheral vision which I think might've affected it.

- didn't wear them long enough to be sure, but I'm wondering about the comfort level, both physical (ie, wearing big bulky plastic things on your face) and issues with staring at screens 2cm from your eyeballs maybe causing headaches or something.

Overall though, it was certainly cool enough to make me keep an eye on these devices. I suspect in a few versions they'll be pretty damn impressive.