Canon Demos New Head-Mounted Augmented-Reality Display

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Canon Demos New Head-Mounted Augmented-Reality Display

Posted by timothy on Saturday February 23, 2013 @05:30AM from the you-thought-texting-was-bad dept.

Press2ToContinue writes with this excerpt from ExtremeTech: "With products like Google's Glass, the Oculus Rift, and even certain features found on the Nintendo 3DS, augmented, mixed, and virtual reality are starting to make some headway in the consumer space. Canon, best known for its cameras, is looking to break into the mixed reality scene with its new head-mounted display. ... The core of the setup is the Canon HMD (head-mounted display) which works in conjunction with various sensors — optical and magnetic, as well as visual markers — to help create the mixed reality environment. The HMD employs two cameras located in front of each eye that captures video and shoots it off to an off-board, tethered computer. The computer then combines the real-world visuals with computer-generated visuals, and beams that back to two monitors placed in front of the eyes within the HMD. The unit combines with a development platform, dubbed the MR Platform, which allows companies to create mixed reality images to display on the HMD."

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Dear Canon, by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-23 05:32 · Score: 3, Insightful

That's very nice. But the 1990s called and want it back.
1. Re:Dear Canon, by oodaloop · 2013-02-23 06:26 · Score: 1
  
  But the 1990s called
  
  You at least warned them about 9/11 though, right?
  
  --
  Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
2. Re:Dear Canon, by davester666 · 2013-02-23 09:54 · Score: 1
  
  No, we warned them about Bush instead. Cause vs result...
  
  --
  Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
3. Re:Dear Canon, by oodaloop · 2013-02-23 10:19 · Score: 1
  
  The fuck? 9/11 was planned all the way back in 1994 in the Bojinka Plot. I'm no fan of Bush and I can understand not liking how he handled it, but he didn't cause 9/11.
  
  --
  Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
4. Re:Dear Canon, by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-23 12:24 · Score: 1
  
  Oh please! Everyone knows that 9/11 was planned all the way back to 1961 when Obama was born.
5. Re:Dear Canon, by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-23 17:23 · Score: 0
  
  Osama Bin Laden himself went on record stating that the cause was the Bush "royalty".
6. Re:Dear Canon, by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-23 17:28 · Score: 0
  
  Yeah, I remember those stupid tablet computers Microsoft was pushing in the 90s, and now I read those dummies at Apple are thinking about coming out with one. Like a mere two decades of technology advances are going to make any difference in the experience.
Canon? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-23 05:37 · Score: 0

Will it cost 50% more than the nearest competitor, yet offer 60% fewer features and have a serious design flaw that breaks it a week after the warranty expires, and have thousands of people report the same problem, but deny it exists?
1. Re:Canon? by angiasaa · 2013-02-23 05:41 · Score: 1
  
  Apple no?
  
  --
  Geekism is your _only_ God!
2. Re:Canon? by nametaken · 2013-02-23 06:00 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Yes... feeeel the hate. Let it flow through you, consume you, make you stronger. Know the power of the slashdot.
3. Re:Canon? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-23 06:13 · Score: 0
  
  I feel the hate every time I use my S3. It either powers up and then crashes so bad it doesn't even have time to properly clear the gate drivers in the LCD. You get this ghost image on the LCD that slowly fades away. That takes a special level of incompetence since not even the lowest of the low LCD monitors do that. They didn't even do that 15 years ago.
  Or you can turn it on, but woe is you if you dare to use the zoom function: it'll crash the camera with a "lens error". Or the tragic design flaw of the lens extension mechanism acting as an air cylinder and sucking in air from the outside every time you turn on the camera?
  Or is the crappy low battery detection that warns you about 10 seconds before it shuts itself off?
  Or is it the low image quality, always slightly softly out of focus, or noisy and grainy unless you use a nuclear bomb as a flash.
  And even then, the dynamic range is so low that the slightest highlight blows out the picture.
  Or is it the features always a few years behind the lower-priced competition?
  Can't wait to get a better job and finally buy a real camera, ie not Canon.
  Even my pinhole camera in my cell takes much better pictures.
4. Re:Canon? by chill · 2013-02-23 07:42 · Score: 2
  
  No. If a competitor is the Occulus Rift at $300 and this Canon unit is $125,000 with a $25,000 annual maintenance charge I think they've blown right past 50% more expensive.
  I'd rather get the Occulus with the optional Tesla S Performance and save a few bucks.
  
  --
  Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
5. Re:Canon? by Hanzie · 2013-02-23 12:18 · Score: 1
  
  No. If a competitor is the Occulus Rift at $300 and this Canon unit is $125,000 with a $25,000 annual maintenance charge I think they've blown right past 50% more expensive.
  I'd rather get the Occulus with the optional Tesla S Performance and save a few bucks.
  The parent comment is the very definition of insightful.
  +1
  
  --
  ********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
Canon HMD (head-mounted display by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-23 05:44 · Score: 0

I thought HD porn was great. Now HMD porn... fantastic.
1. Re:Canon HMD (head-mounted display by drkim · 2013-02-23 08:30 · Score: 1
  
  I thought HD porn was great. Now HMD porn... fantastic.
  You do know that this means instead of seeing your old wife in some crappy $50 lingerie, you'll strap on your $125,000 HMD and see your old wife in some crappy virtual lingerie.
2. Re:Canon HMD (head-mounted display by Hanzie · 2013-02-23 12:19 · Score: 1
  
  I thought HD porn was great. Now HMD porn... fantastic.
  You do know that this means instead of seeing your old wife in some crappy $50 lingerie, you'll strap on your $125,000 HMD and see your old wife in some crappy virtual lingerie.
  Porn. You're doing it wrong. His wife isn't whom I will be looking at.
  
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  ********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
3. Re:Canon HMD (head-mounted display by mikael · 2013-02-23 13:11 · Score: 1
  
  However, if you get to see your wife in over 2500 different piece of virtual lingerie, the system will have paid for itself.
  
  --
  Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
4. Re:Canon HMD (head-mounted display by drkim · 2013-02-23 18:09 · Score: 1
  
  However, if you get to see your wife in over 2500 different piece of virtual lingerie, the system will have paid for itself.
  ...or to save time, you could just view your wife in one virtual NASCAR Sprint Cup Car.
  (Danica Patrick only.)
That's quite a price tag by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-23 05:55 · Score: 1

$125,000 up front plus $25,000 per year in maintenance. Almost nobody will actually see one of these in real life.
1. Re:That's quite a price tag by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-23 05:57 · Score: 0
  
  Not unless they 3D print themselves a pair. It's the future, after all.
2. Re:That's quite a price tag by hedwards · 2013-02-23 06:06 · Score: 1
  
  How many people saw the older ones in real life? The only reason I saw the '80s era gear in person at all, was that the Science Center bought a rig 10 years after it was obsolete. I vaguely remember the '90s era consumer gear and it wasn't as good as the '80s era gear, except for the resolution. It lacked the interface and cost about half the price of a new computer of the era.
3. Re:That's quite a price tag by Beardydog · 2013-02-23 07:43 · Score: 1
  
  I went HMD hang-gliding at the Seattle Science Center in the 90s. It was super-heavy, lagged like 300ms, looked like Avara, and was over in about fifteen seconds, so the person behind me could be underwhelmed. I don't think it was even stereo, but I could be wrong. That said, I would sacrifice and infant for an Oculus Rift.
4. Re:That's quite a price tag by drkim · 2013-02-23 08:36 · Score: 1
  
  $125,000 up front plus $25,000 per year in maintenance. Almost nobody will actually see one of these in real life.
  I saw this at SIGGRAPH. It was cool, but not useful in any consumer level way. There are full immersion HMDs for gaming, and Google Glass for AR.
  You might see this at the retail store level: trying on virtual clothes, customizing your new car, etc.
Marketed for the Military by Nyder · 2013-02-23 06:00 · Score: 4, Informative

since it has a $125k price tag.
No one else is that stupid to pay that much.

--
Be seeing you...
1. Re:Marketed for the Military by Woogiemonger · 2013-02-23 06:34 · Score: 2
  
  I'm sure the military will be a customer, but $125k for any major corporation is negligible. I was going to reply saying the cost of building a concept car, for instance, is peanuts compared with $125k. However, the industry standard, upon further looking into it, is to build a large scale non-working prototype. If they want it functional, they might take the drive train out of an existing car. This is pretty close to the functionality you get out of prototyping with VR, and the majority of the cost is the CAD. The big savings comes with the modifications. The "let's see what it looks like if you did this". The time savings would be immense, to produce a new model for every change. Also, the remote transmission of prototypes. A movie studio in California, and a machine shop in Colorado might want to see what the latest Dalek costume looks like in a new Dr. Who movie, produced by designers in Japan. If this is the best thing out there, $125k seems to be the right price.
2. Re:Marketed for the Military by Beardydog · 2013-02-23 07:49 · Score: 1
  
  If you payed me 125,000, I would finish college, learn about optics, build you a headset, write you better software than this, build a ludicrous computer to run it on, then give you back the remaining 25,000 dollars.
3. Re:Marketed for the Military by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-23 09:04 · Score: 0
  
  So you're saying they should take a huge risk hiring you with no substantiated guarantees, and wait several years just to save $25,000, maybe, on something they can have today? That's a measly ROI of 20% for an extremely high-risk project, and if they don't need this right-away they're much better off investing the money and waiting for the improved products in future, instead of committing themselves to an unknown quantity... Somehow I believe you when you say you're still in college, you've still got a lot to learn.
4. Re:Marketed for the Military by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-23 10:38 · Score: 0
  
  A hospital would buy this... IF they could say that they would get ONE less wrongful death lawsuit ( which costs both $ and P.R. ) because 125$k is probably worth that.
5. Re:Marketed for the Military by Hanzie · 2013-02-23 12:24 · Score: 1
  
  For $125K, I could deliver Occulus Rift + Google Glasses in a month, and still have enough left over for your education. And the month is only to find some current owners who will part with their treasure.
  
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  ********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
6. Re:Marketed for the Military by fustakrakich · 2013-02-23 12:44 · Score: 1
  
  No one else is that stupid to pay that much.
  Except the taxpayers...
  
  --
  “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Advertising fail by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-23 06:01 · Score: 0

Why would you "invest into a physical prototype" when you can already have a free "digital model"?
Please tell me this is a joke by DigitalSorceress · 2013-02-23 06:04 · Score: 1

Sriously - I think I'd rather wear Stimpy's Happy Helmet than this thing.
I may think that the Google Glass is a bit overhyped, but at least it doesn't look like you just strapped your Canon Point and Shoot to your forehead.

--

The Digital Sorceress
1. Re:Please tell me this is a joke by DigitalSorceress · 2013-02-23 06:40 · Score: 1
  
  Sorry for the craptastic spelling.
  
  --
  
  The Digital Sorceress
Again.... by n3tm0nk · 2013-02-23 06:09 · Score: 0

with the over-priced, over-hyped apple crap. Hey, if you want to flush your money, that IS your business....
1. Re:Again.... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-23 06:12 · Score: 0
  
  Feel the irrational hate! Let it consume you!
2. Re:Again.... by n3tm0nk · 2013-02-23 07:06 · Score: 0
  
  My distaste for things apple is in no way irrational. If you would like to address the irrational ones, talk to the apple consumers.
3. Re:Again.... by Hanzie · 2013-02-23 12:25 · Score: 1
  
  Goooooooooooooooood!
  
  --
  ********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
Re:Nikon? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-23 06:15 · Score: 0

Correction: Nikon (D600)
Application ideas: by SuricouRaven · 2013-02-23 06:17 · Score: 4, Interesting

Adblock RL: Replaces all billboards, posters and other advertising with blank space.
Social-app: Automatically recognises the faces of everyone you are supposed to know and overlays name and a history of recent interactions, allowing you to pretend you care enough to remember who they are.
Nudievision: Construct a 3d model of figures and overlay, effectively removing clothing.
Pure Eyes: Blocks any sexual images, including women showing more flesh than would be considered modest in an Amish town. Marketed at the super-devout Christian market.
Halal Eyes: Actually just Pure Eyes with the logo changed, but marketed to Muslims instead.
Child compass: Receives GPS position from offspring's mobile phone and maintains a continually updated directional indicator to aid to recapture when they run off.
Pedofinder: For every face seen, perform automatic lookup in public sex offender databases. A vital app for all paranoid parents so they know when to shun people.
Gaydar: Tags an icon over any other Gaydar user.
1. Re:Application ideas: by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-24 03:21 · Score: 0
  
  You must work in marketing to have that many ideas. Also, Google just stole all of them and applied for patents.
2. Re:Application ideas: by DavidTC · 2013-02-24 05:17 · Score: 1
  
  Gaydar: Tags an icon over any other Gaydar user.
  I don't think that's how 'gaydar' is supposed to work. Straight people can have gaydar, and gay people might not. (Gay people probably _try_ to have it, but that doesn't mean it works.)
  You actually could implement a gaydar feature, though. It theoretically should be possible to statistically detect slight sexual attraction towards others. Watch other people's sightline, and check their pupils for dilation and what their eye stops on, etc. You could even detect heartrate and temperature changes.(1)
  It probably would only work on average, but, hey, so does real gaydar. In fact, that exact mechanism is one of the ways that gaydar is proposed to work: People with gaydar might subconsciously detect who is subconsciously attracted to whom.
  1) I was going to point out nothing currently sold can do detect heartrate or tempurature, but nothing currently sold can even figure out the sightlines of other people, much less detect if the person being looked at is male or female. No one of this is actually technically possible at the moment.
  
  --
  If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
3. Re:Application ideas: by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-25 00:25 · Score: 0
  
  nothing currently sod can even figure out the sight lines of other people
  Nope, have tracking is rather mature filed. If you can put dedicated hardware on someone it's trivial to DIY at home with one or two USB webcams and some nIR filters. if you want to do it hands-off at a distance, the hardware to do that is more expensive, but has been commercial available for at least a decade.
4. Re:Application ideas: by DavidTC · 2013-02-25 16:55 · Score: 1
  
  I'm not entirely sure what you're saying, but it's easy to track someone's eyes relative to the _tracker's_ POV. You put a camera above a computer screen, it can easily know what what you're looking at once it's calibrated correctly.
  The hard part is actually figuring what the person is looking at when it _isn't_ a computer generated picture, and isn't head-on. Hell, it's hard enough for a computer to figure out the _distance_ to something in a video image.
  Basically, the camera would have to identify someone's face and their eyes in the face. This is somewhat possible.
  It would then have to figure out the distance to their face. Then, using the distance and the angle of their eyes, it would know roughly where they were looking. This is also, possibly, something that can be done.
  It would then have to generate a 3D map of the world and figuring out what they were looking at, which is completely impossibly currently. Generating a 3D map of the world is _hard_, especially from the limited data of a single, randomly-positioned camera. Especially when this has to be done every second or so. (As the point is to measure where people look on average.)
  And this is assuming that cameras can actually identify who is male and who is female, which I find a bit dubious.
  At some point in the future, portable computers will be powerful enough to keep updated a map of the room room they're in, along with every single known person tagged with a name and unknown people tagged with all sorts of description information. And at _that_ point, it would be rather easy to make 'gaydar', and in fact there's some odd privacy issues there with eye tracking I've never seen anyone talking about, especially as so much of eye movement is not under conscious control and _not even the person looking_ knows it happened. (I forget what's it's called, but the eye moves a lot more often than we think, because the eye _turns off_ when it does that.)
  But computers can't do that now. It might be possible to set up cameras watching people in known locations, and other people in other known locations (like seating at a bar or something) and create enough of a 3D map that a computer can calculate this stuff, although it still wouldn't be real time, and I suspect that a human being going in and tagging each person as 'attractive female' or 'unattractive male' might be needed. But a random room and a random camera on a person? Not likely.
  
  --
  If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
So much bullshit in one video by loufoque · 2013-02-23 06:28 · Score: 2

The video has so much bullshitting going on in it that it's really impressive.
It reminds me of all the people I've seen when creating my start-up. Why do people in emerging businesses think it is a good idea to make ridiculously bold statements about technology that clearly isn't that world shaking?
1. Re:So much bullshit in one video by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-23 07:27 · Score: 1
  
  The video has so much bullshitting going on in it that it's really impressive.
  It reminds me of all the people I've seen when creating my start-up. Why do people in emerging businesses think it is a good idea to make ridiculously bold statements about technology that clearly isn't that world shaking?
  I feel bad for the engineers who worked on this product. It's probably a very good product and then marketing gets their hands on it a F#@ks it all up. Nothing worse than having all your great ideas and hard work be diminished by some lousy marketing campaign.
I see a lot of people living in mixed reality by istartedi · 2013-02-23 06:48 · Score: 1

Not too many people, really. Most of them hang out by the train station. They don't pay anything for mixed reality. It just happens, and most of the time they didn't do anything to deserve it. You see a lot of other people doing this too, but they usually have to buy a plastic bag full of this funny dried up plant stuff. Then they--get this--smoke that crap. It smells funny, but it works. They're almost immediately living in "mixed reality".
Now tech companies are doing this? I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. Mixed reality is a pretty old game. Priests and politicians have been doing it as long as civilization. They can do it just by talking at you. It's a pretty amazing skill. Sometimes they combine it with those funny plants I was telling you about. Sometimes they don't. There's all kinds of techniques.
Anyway, this doesn't sound like anything really new to me.

--
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
1. Re:I see a lot of people living in mixed reality by drkim · 2013-02-23 08:43 · Score: 1
  
  Not too many people, really. Most of them hang out by the train station. They don't pay anything for mixed reality. ...
  Agreed. The difference with this system (apart from the $125,000) is that you can control the mixed reality you're in.
2. Re:I see a lot of people living in mixed reality by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-23 14:41 · Score: 0
  
  You must not be a very experienced 'mixed reality' user.... I control my mixed reality, no matter the source!
3. Re:I see a lot of people living in mixed reality by drkim · 2013-02-23 18:03 · Score: 1
  
  You must not be a very experienced 'mixed reality' user.... I control my mixed reality, no matter the source!
  It's so refreshing to see psychotics represented here on /.
Yikes by Guspaz · 2013-02-23 06:51 · Score: 2

I realize this is for AR more than VR, but I'd rather take a $300 Rift with a huge FoV than a $125k Canon thingy with a tiny FoV...
Sleezy Ad by socialleech · 2013-02-23 07:15 · Score: 1

The video in TFA sounds and looks like an MLM marketing video..
sex with virtual women by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-23 14:10 · Score: 1

I would love this, I would like to sit on my couch with my fleshlight and have a virtual woman go up an down and see her boobies bounce when I move my fleshlight up and down, that would be awesome! I would pay $25,000 for that.
See to be? C to B? Going backwards? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-23 16:15 · Score: 0

Not sure I understand their tagline but it somehow makes me feel like it's timelord talk.