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Intel Unveils Project Alloy 'Merged Reality' Wireless Headset (hothardware.com)
MojoKid writes: Intel CEO Bryan Krzanich took to the stage at the Moscone Center in San Francisco today to kick off this year's Intel Developers Forum. Kyrzanich unveiled a number of new projects and products including a product code-named "Project Alloy." The device is an un-tethered, merged reality Head Mounted Device (HMD) that combines compute, graphics, multiple RealSense modules, various sensors, and batteries into a self-contained headset that offers a full six degrees of freedom. Unlike the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive, Project Alloy does not need to be wired to a PC or other device and it does not require externally mounted sensors to define a virtual space. Instead, it uses RealSense cameras to map the actual physical world you're in while wearing the HMD. The RealSense cameras also allow the device to bring real-world objects into the virtual world, or vice versa. The cameras and sensors used in Project Alloy offer full depth sensing, so obstacles can be mapped, and people and objects within camera range -- like your hand, for example -- can be brought into the virtual world and accurately tracked. During a live, on-stage demo performed by Intel's Craig Raymond, Craig's hand was tracked and all five digits, complete with accurate bones and joint locations, were brought into the the VR/AR experience. Project Alloy will be supported by Microsoft's Windows Holographics Shell framework.
This device does realworld object mapping and tracking already. It's just a few tweaks away from mapping a stereographic camera feed over each eye (digitally corrected for angle) with AR elements superimpsed. That's basically what the HUD in modt FPS games have these days. Having vector computation for something like a handgun's pointed direction for assisted targeting is getting much closer to reality.
I dont see ordinary people using these, but i could see physicians using it with backscatter and terrahertz imaging sources, and i can see the military using it.
The Demo looks like it's behind state-of the art tech quite a bit. Their hand-tracking was abysmal (the years-old LeapMotion seems way more precise and quick), the latency was noticeable even under the presumably perfect conditions, HoloLens does the 3D tracking better it seems, and any Android phone can do better graphics with a cheap VR viewer.
It might be impressive that this unit is all self-contained, but this really doesn't seem state-of-the-art at all!
It's already called Augmented Reality. We don't need a new name for it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Barbra Streisand's lawyer called, he said you can't steal her effect
lucm, indeed.