Affordable 3D VR AR Headset + 3D Sculpting on a massive screen!

[Marc Wakefield]

Hey Guys!

 

I am backing an interesting project on Kickstarter at the moment. (I am getting a little addicted) ;-)

 

The project in question is a device called the Cmoar: a VR AR Headset which uses an Android phone to work.

(Yeah I hear ya - there are loads of these out there already, Google Cardboard, Vrase, Opendive, etc)

 

The difference here is that this device doesn't only do AR and VR with Side By Side displayed images, it also has a 2D lens (part of a set of interchangeable lenses offering VR and AR) which gives the wearer the feeling of viewing their content on a massive 125" screen.

 

It can also be linked to a PC or console for 60fps streaming of content (provided you have an Nvidia GTX card) which means you could potentially model, design & sculpt on a giant screen!

Everything around you is blacked out which completely immerses you in your work. 

 

Anyway, I thought this might be of interest to some other designers, sculptors, architects, game developers and modelers out there as I think Cmoar could have great potential - (and I really want one!)

The product can be had for just £60 GBP / $100 USD. They only have 8 days to go and they are currently at £24,000 of their £60,000 goal.

 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/706938033/cmoar-personal-smartphone-viewer

[BeatKitano]

Latency. Dead end. I would cancel my pledge if I were you...

[Marc Wakefield]

It's only £60 Beat.

I think I'll chance it.   

 

I would probably mainly use it for games anyway. I am bit of a sucker for shiny new gadgets.

[BeatKitano]

£60 for something which won't work as soon as a new android version comes out and will be dropped quickly with newer phone models with Android Life embedded... steep price, with just the consideration you'll need to have your display active for the whole use (many hours) on few hundred bucks smartphones which for the most part are not made to have the screen on for such a long period.

It'll work, but for how long at what cost ? :/

I would rather much prefer to wait for a dedicated device which is engineered just to withstand such use, than jeopardize the lifespan of an already costly device.

Also, unless your device is running on tegra chips, you'll have to use wifi (with a dedicated software for streaming) which is terrible for transmitting audio+video reliably in near latency-free setting. In other word: this thing may work for movies (and my experience in this area tells me wifi streaming is not even nice to use it for that, even miracast has its occasional hiccups and for what i've seen most of the chip supporting wiDi are just laggy as hell), but for games... maybe for those who don't need immediate response... maybe.

 

Btw: I'm a sucker for gadget (I get my hands on TONS of thing, thankfully I don't need to keep them if I don't want to), but with that habit also comes the perspective on said gadgets. With enough time you'll start to see what's been well thought out and may work and what is flawed by design. Remember leap motion ? That was one of those flawed designs, tell me, honestly (I don't juge as I've made some bad acquisition too): do you use it much ?

[Marc Wakefield]

The leap is sitting in my laptop bag eating crumbs. It rarely gets to see the light of day and to be honest, I feel sorry for the little guy.

I am the first to admit that I get a bit excited and tend to jump around ( much to the annoyance of everyone around me ) proclaiming "THIS is the future!" to which they reply "you said that about the last gadget / bit of software you bought!"

 

Still, It would be nice to be proved wrong.

I have a Galaxy Note 3 which is a pretty awesome device and I will probably upgrade to V4 when it comes out.

Early tests of the software with a home made Google Cardboard do seem promising.