Skip to main content

Intel’s Project Alloy chases perfect immersion, but comes up short

A number of innovations come together to power Intel’s Project Alloy, a wireless virtual reality headset. The first generation version has two RealSense cameras for tracking and room localization, an Intel Atom processor for vision processing, and the best available Wi-Fi tech to communicate with the host computer. It’s an ambitious project, maybe too ambitious, even for a silicon giant.

To be clear, the first generation Alloy we spent time with at CES is a very early design concept, and not one Intel plans to bring to market. That role will be filled by the Alloy Gen 2, which will cut down to one RealSense camera, and will replace the Atom chip with a dedicated Movidius motion coprocessor. Even that likely won’t be a product Intel itself sells for long. This technology is destined for partner headsets.

Its implications in the VR marketplace are much larger. You’ll have trouble finding anyone who argues that untethered and standalone headsets aren’t the future of the industry. Cutting the cord is one of a few major hurdles on our way to perfect immersion, but it still has a ways to go.

Where we are today

For now, Alloy is what Intel has, and it’s a little rough. The clarity of the headset wasn’t great, but that’s to be expected from a preview version of a headset. The real issue was tracking. Alloy scans the room ahead of time and creates a map, allowing it to replace the furniture and objects in the room with digital game objects.

Unfortunately, it didn’t quite line things up correctly, and we found ourselves knocking knees and tripping over invisible objects frequently. The motion controller worked relative to where we held it, but didn’t associate correctly for point-and-click operation, and moving it outside a small area caused it to skip around and jutter.

That’s not to say it’s all bad. If anyone is going to solve the problem of heavy cables connecting high-end HMDs, it should be Intel. The chip manufacturer has access to powerful RealSense cameras, infinite control over its own processors, and employees engineers experience with building platforms from the ground up. But Intel is not the only company trying to crack the secret of wireless VR.

Oculus
Oculus

Oculus has an early concept, as well, the Santa Cruz protoype, which we saw at Oculus Connect this year. Like Alloy, Santa Cruz packs all of the necessary hardware inside the headset itself, and uses four cameras embedded in the front for tracking.

When we spent time with the wireless HMD, it was clearly very early in the design process. It looked like a Rift headset, with a set of batteries and exposed circuit boards attached by tape. That version of the headset worked remarkably well, at least where tracking is concerned.

Holographic, and the future

Speaking of increasingly specific hardware, Windows Holographic is right around the corner, promising to bring everyone’s favorite OS to the mixed reality world. It’s another huge step towards solidifying the AR/VR community, but like Alloy, the HoloLens itself isn’t necessarily the most important part of that evolution.

In the case of Windows Holographic, the partner headsets are likely to be much more common than Microsoft’s likely-expensive option. It’s also the first true full platform for productivity and computing in VR, although there are alternatives for a few programs that bridge the gap. The ultimate goal there is standalone computing, and more headsets means more options.

You couldn’t walk two booths at CES this year without seeing a VR headset of some sort. Whether it was an HTC Vive or a Gear VR, last year’s hottest demo has become the norm, but that doesn’t mean work on the format is done. Wireless and untethered headsets, along with mobile phone-powered options that are growing more powerful every day, are going to continue to define most users’ interaction with VR.

Editors' Recommendations

Brad Bourque
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Brad Bourque is a native Portlander, devout nerd, and craft beer enthusiast. He studied creative writing at Willamette…
How Intel will plunk you into South Korean snow by streaming the Olympics in VR

When the Olympics happen, the world unifies by tuning in – but only a few are lucky enough to be in the crowd watching the world's greatest athletes compete. An even smaller amount -- mostly the best athletes in the world -- get to be inches away from the action. This year, when the Winter Olympic Games hit Pyeongchang, South Korea, on February 9, you can be one of the lucky ones, as Intel and NBC will be bringing the Olympic events to the NBC Sports VR app its revamped entirely.

Intel and NBC will bring 30 Olympic events to virtual reality. 18 of those will be streamed live in VR, a first for the Winter Olympics. The remaining 12 events will be available as video on-demand (VOD) the day after the event is over.

Read more
The big PC trends from CES: Intel befriends AMD, monitors get massive, and more
Dell XPS 15 2-in-1

While great laptops and 2-in-1s come out every year, we don't see significant innovation taking place in computing on an annual basis. But this year at CES, we saw some upending of the standard quo on a number of levels.

The trends we saw from the show floor have us both curious and excited about the future of computing. Some will undoubtedly end up in dead ends -- and others will probably become the new status quo in just a few years.
Intel and AMD call a truce

Read more
Intel’s ‘Hades Canyon’ NUC packs gaming hardware into just 1.2 liters
Intel NUC 6i7KYK

On Sunday, January 7, Intel finally revealed its portfolio of modules pairing its seventh-generation “Kaby Lake” processor cores with AMD’s Radeon “Vega” graphics cores. The announcement originally made waves in November, with Intel and AMD-based customers seemingly looking up into the sky for flying pigs. But the collaboration is no joke, and one of the first products to benefit from the team-up is a new NUC (short for Next Unit of Computing) for enthusiasts, codenamed 'Hades Canyon.'

Although Intel didn’t provide any detailed hardware specifications prior to Sunday’s reveal, what we do know is that it’s based on the Core i7-8809G. We saw this module briefly listed on Intel’s website in India earlier this week, but now we have confirmed hardware details to give us an idea of what this NUC for “enthusiasts” is all about. Here’s are the specifics:

Read more