To a prosperous 2014!

AR

Hi everybody!

Welcome back and a happy new year! Hope you had a great time – with your families, on some beach vacations or even at work – if you really had to! In any case, now it’s time to jump into some new fresh AR for 2014 and I’m sure we can expect some cool AR activities within the next days already!

The CES just started today, so I’m sure there will be more goodies (also see below), we have the AR talks and AR regular’s table within the next two weeks in Munich and the Mobile World Congress will be on in February… So, more to come!!!

Now, let’s get ready for it and kick off with HMD news from the CES!

Foto (C) heise.de

We talk about the “Epson Moverio BT-200”. Now it has been officially presented and we can all write about it. I had the chance to see the almost final version last October on insideAR2013 behind closed doors. But as I am not sure, if they did tweak it a bit further, I copied a pic from heise.de’s report on CES and refer to specs and reports on the on-location guys, for instance CNET.com, trustedreviews and gizmodo for you to check out their final version hands-on coverage. Seems like nothing had changed (from the reports or images). So, let me summarize my own conclusion on the October-version:

  • it sure is more light-weight than earlier HMDs (BT-100, et.al.)
  • it is supposed to have way longer battery-life (6 hours used), which would be awesome
  • it has a great overlay feeling in the center of the field of view, not small in an upper right corner somewhere…
  • it has a clear, fully see-through vision, nothing blocks your view (except for semi-transparent overlay)

    • So, this leads me to the first conclusion, that it is definitely ready for special use cases in an industrial/medical environment. Usage should be possible here, if added value for the money (~700 USD), robustness of tracking and battery life are fitting into that calculation.

    On the other hand, this device is definitely not the one you as an end-user or gamer want to grab. (Sorry.) The design is still too bulky for the street and the field of view is still too small for convincing immersion for mixed reality gaming. It sure works for some screen info overlays or mini games – but we all know the cool concept videos with a full coverage of our field of view. This is not there (yet!). Immersion breaks fast on the corners of the projected rectangular area and as you cannot move this area you cannot trick it or adjust it. So, second conclusion: let’s wait further or stick to VR diver’s goggles for now!

    Talking of fancy conceptual videos of how AR is gonna change our daily life in all aspects… another neat visual demo (well done!) for this dream now comes from Atheer Labs. Enjoy, a happy new year and a great start!