Ex-Valve staffers launch Kickstarter for augmented and virtual reality glasses

By Adam Rosenberg October 15, 2013

ex valve staffers launch kickstarter for augmented and virtual reality glasses castar — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Oculus Rift is no longer the only hot virtual reality tech around. Enter castAR, a “projected augmented reality system” that works using a combination of heavily kitted out glasses, a motion-sensing “Magic Wand,” and an RFID Tracking Grid. It is the creation of Jeri Ellsworth and Rick Johnson, a pair of ex-Valve Software staffers who spent their final months at the company working on an augmented reality project. After leaving Valve, they formed Technical Illusions together and are now seeking $400,000 in crowdfunding on Kickstarter.

The castAR glasses are quite a bit more complicated than Oculus Rift, which is ultimately just a monitor that you wear on your head. The glasses themselves are fitted with two micro-projectors, one for each eye, and make use of active shutter technology to limit what each eye can see. Between the two lenses is a camera that enables head-tracking, using infrared ID markers placed on an included reflective surface. This is where the castAR’s holographic projections appear. Then there’s the Magic Wand, a Wii Remote-like device fitted with buttons and a trigger, an analog stick, and motion tracking tech.

Various funding tiers allow backers to choose whether they want just the glasses/reflective sheet, just the Magic Wand, or the entire bundle. There are additional options as well for those who want to accessorize with RFID tracking bases (for use with, say, action figures). Give the Kickstarter page a read; castAR is a nifty piece of tech, but it’s a bit more complicated to explain than something like the Rift.

Fans of virtual reality: this is great news. Oculus VR is generating a lot of interest out in the gaming world, so much so that Sony may be prepping its own VR goggles for the PlayStation 4. Competition is a good thing, and castAR is yet another contender. The more options there are, the more the respective creators and engineers are pushed to innovate.

Developer kits for castAR are expected to ship in late 2014. Take a peek at the Kickstarter and see what Ellsworth and Johnson have been up to.

Topics

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Previously, Adam worked in the games press as a freelance writer and critic for a range of outlets, including Digital Trends…

News

Digital Trends’ Top Tech of CES 2023 Awards

Best of CES 2023 Awards Our Top Tech from the Show Feature

Let there be no doubt: CES isn’t just alive in 2023; it’s thriving. Take one glance at the taxi gridlock outside the Las Vegas Convention Center and it’s evident that two quiet COVID years didn’t kill the world’s desire for an overcrowded in-person tech extravaganza -- they just built up a ravenous demand.

From VR to AI, eVTOLs and QD-OLED, the acronyms were flying and fresh technologies populated every corner of the show floor, and even the parking lot. So naturally, we poked, prodded, and tried on everything we could. They weren’t all revolutionary. But they didn’t have to be. We’ve watched enough waves of “game-changing” technologies that never quite arrive to know that sometimes it’s the little tweaks that really count.

News

Digital Trends’ Tech For Change CES 2023 Awards

Digital Trends CES 2023 Tech For Change Award Winners Feature

CES is more than just a neon-drenched show-and-tell session for the world’s biggest tech manufacturers. More and more, it’s also a place where companies showcase innovations that could truly make the world a better place — and at CES 2023, this type of tech was on full display. We saw everything from accessibility-minded PS5 controllers to pedal-powered smart desks. But of all the amazing innovations on display this year, these three impressed us the most:

Samsung's Relumino Mode
Across the globe, roughly 300 million people suffer from moderate to severe vision loss, and generally speaking, most TVs don’t take that into account. So in an effort to make television more accessible and enjoyable for those millions of people suffering from impaired vision, Samsung is adding a new picture mode to many of its new TVs.
[CES 2023] Relumino Mode: Innovation for every need | Samsung
Relumino Mode, as it’s called, works by adding a bunch of different visual filters to the picture simultaneously. Outlines of people and objects on screen are highlighted, the contrast and brightness of the overall picture are cranked up, and extra sharpness is applied to everything. The resulting video would likely look strange to people with normal vision, but for folks with low vision, it should look clearer and closer to "normal" than it otherwise would.
Excitingly, since Relumino Mode is ultimately just a clever software trick, this technology could theoretically be pushed out via a software update and installed on millions of existing Samsung TVs -- not just new and recently purchased ones.

Entertainment

AI turned Breaking Bad into an anime — and it’s terrifying

Split image of Breaking Bad anime characters.

These days, it seems like there's nothing AI programs can't do. Thanks to advancements in artificial intelligence, deepfakes have done digital "face-offs" with Hollywood celebrities in films and TV shows, VFX artists can de-age actors almost instantly, and ChatGPT has learned how to write big-budget screenplays in the blink of an eye. Pretty soon, AI will probably decide who wins at the Oscars.

Within the past year, AI has also been used to generate beautiful works of art in seconds, creating a viral new trend and causing a boon for fan artists everywhere. TikTok user @cyborgism recently broke the internet by posting a clip featuring many AI-generated pictures of Breaking Bad. The theme here is that the characters are depicted as anime characters straight out of the 1980s, and the result is concerning to say the least. Depending on your viewpoint, Breaking Bad AI (my unofficial name for it) shows how technology can either threaten the integrity of original works of art or nurture artistic expression.
What if AI created Breaking Bad as a 1980s anime?
Playing over Metro Boomin's rap remix of the famous "I am the one who knocks" monologue, the video features images of the cast that range from shockingly realistic to full-on exaggerated. The clip currently has over 65,000 likes on TikTok alone, and many other users have shared their thoughts on the art. One user wrote, "Regardless of the repercussions on the entertainment industry, I can't wait for AI to be advanced enough to animate the whole show like this."