This looks pretty incredible! I was initially slightly sceptical (3D printed glasses, slightly conceptual looking design), but reading what they've accomplished so far pretty much eliminates that scepticism. The project founders (Jerri Ellsworth in particular is a huge name in electronics) bring a lot of credibility as well. I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes! Hopefully they can raise enough money.
I'm glad they have a separate package just for the tracking system. I listened to a podcast with Jerri that was posted here, that I can't find at the moment, where she discusses the details of the work that went into building the ASIC that performs the positional tracking, and I see tons of potential for this in other projects as well.
What I like best about this is that it lends itself to 3rd-person vantage views, and static fields (overlooking a map, looking into a box, etc) which tend to be more comfortable AR & VR than trying to track/render a first person view (oculus rift) at 60 fps == less "VR sickness".
Walk me through how multiple users are looking at the same screen. Isn't everyone projecting 2 images of their own? Are the polarized glasses really narrow band, or something?
The retro-reflective surface makes sure the projector light only bounces back in your direction (well most of it).
Someone standing a few feet away won't see what you're seeing.
Without a multi-user frame sync, this prohibits users from being near-angles from each other to the retro-reflector, which basically prevents someone from "pointing" in AR into the others' field of view. Not necessarily a big limitation, but say you want to point out e.g. a terrain feature. If the software lets you select it, awesome! but if it's unselectable, you just have to try to describe it "the tree three trees over from the west wall... no not that one". Having good 'pointer drop' support mitigates this I suppose.
You can see the person's finger (or the CastAR wand's tip). I imagine the rendering engine will show the same thing in the same place relative to the real world for both users. It doesn't have to, in the case of a game where you each have your own point of view, but it could if the game works well that way.
The extent to which retro-reflective material reflects light back is actually quite incredible. I got a new bike light which for weeks I thought was REALLY REALLY BRIGHT until I realised that although it was making street signs 200m away flash brightly, it was only making them flash for me. Even a few degrees out and the reflectivity dropped remarkably.
How does this compare to Oculus Rift in terms of cost, quality, and potential to be a "game changer" as everyone calls both? Especially since CastAR can be both AR and VR, could one hook up a CastAR to the games and demos we already have for Oculus Rift?
IMHO, the main difference would be in the "marketing points," in the sense that they'll attract different kind of people. While technically it's possible for castAR to do what Oculus does, Carmack and Elsworth names alone should show the type of early adopters for each products.
Without a doubt, castAR will close the kickstarter funding. So both of them are facing the chicken and egg problem, I believe castAR will have a huge problem here. To your "game changer" point, castAR is trying to reach a higher sky than Oculus.
I mean, I can see myself having a small space near my bed for Oculus and attaching it to the Steam Machine within a year or two. CastAR? Maybe 5 years ahead of its time? The current implementation of the magic wand worries me. From the video, the awkward looking Jenga-like game seems slow and not 1-to-1 interaction. Although it could be a "beta" thing, Oculus didn't have HD to begin with.
As gamer, I think HD Oculus would be a better purchase, and wait for castAR v2 or v3, I have serious doubt they'll reach mass market.
Between CastAR and Oculus Rift, it just seems an embarassment of riches, speaking as someone who spent a brief time working in VR in the early 90s.
It seems to me that the Oculus is for immersive environments; CastAR for shared and/or augmented reality.
Adapting Oculus Demos would be awkward because CastAR has the reflective surfaces as limited "portals" into the 3d environment. Although I'd guess the 3d engine work would be easily adaptable.
They have a clip-on to the glasses that convert from AR to VR mode. So you wouldn't need a reflective surface portal as you say. I believe switching between the two headsets would just be a matter of software. I'm wondering if that support exists or is easy to make, or whether there would be difficult challenges to it.
Basically, I'd prefer to buy one system that could be both AR and VR than two separate systems, one for VR and one for AR. So that would make CastAR beat out Oculus Rift unless the Oculus Rift was just so much better or the software was incompatible.
