Question For Mike Evans

Slawkenbergius

Slawkenbergius
They'd need the hardware to actually know for sure whether they can implement it. As long as CastAR's APIs are reasonably easy to integrate, and it looks like the project is viable, I can't see a reason why they wouldn't. The same can be said for TrackIR, which they haven't confirmed, but seems likely it will be supported.

Don't hold your breath for an answer though. OR support was confirmed after months of nagging, and after they'd already had the kits a while.
 

jabokai

jabokai
HaiderGill said:
I like the fact that without the VR attachment on you get 3D AR giving you a holodeck with full head-tracking.
Click to expand...

How is it like a holodeck? In AR mode you can only see where you have the reflective screen material, right? So basically it's more like having a bendy 3D TV that you can move around... I mean in AR mode if I look up at my ceiling I'd see nothing whereas the good old Star Trek Holodeck could display anything anywhere... more like VR really!
 

Slawkenbergius

Slawkenbergius
jabokai said:
How is it like a holodeck? In AR mode you can only see where you have the reflective screen material, right? So basically it's more like having a bendy 3D TV that you can move around... I mean in AR mode if I look up at my ceiling I'd see nothing whereas the good old Star Trek Holodeck could display anything anywhere... more like VR really!
Click to expand...

That's why you put retroreflective material on the ceiling, and on the floor and all the walls, and wrap your chair in it. I might get a retroreflective suit, so I can replace my body with... hang on, my internal censor wants a word ... fur?
 

HaiderGill

H
jabokai said:
How is it like a holodeck? In AR mode you can only see where you have the reflective screen material, right? So basically it's more like having a bendy 3D TV that you can move around... I mean in AR mode if I look up at my ceiling I'd see nothing whereas the good old Star Trek Holodeck could display anything anywhere... more like VR really!
Click to expand...

You create a dome or a box. The material is dirt cheap. Check out what the flightsim guys are planning: -

http://technicalillusions.com/forums/archive/index.php?thread-70.html

Jeri and Rick are very helpful...

You cannot see in the YouTube videos but 3D reaches out in front of you i.e. things come flying to your face like the the 3D theme park rides. It can do 3D from in front to all the way back and into the material.
 
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jabokai

jabokai
HaiderGill said:
You create a dome or a box. The material is dirt cheap. Check out what the flightsim guys are planning: -

http://technicalillusions.com/forums/archive/index.php?thread-70.html

Jeri and Rick are very helpful...
Click to expand...

So it's not really "like a holodeck" out of the box, that's what I was getting at - it takes significant effort, and space, to accomplish that. What you get is basically a flexible 3D TV you can put anywhere. I'm not dissing the project, as I've said elsewhere, if the VR side is better than Oculus AND (very important word highlighted there) gets supported then I may well buy one in addition to, or instead of, the Rift. Personally the AR side is of no interest to me at all (I don't have the space to dedicate to it), but the VR side could be.
 

Erimus Kamzel

Erimus Kamzel
Slawkenbergius said:
That's why you put retroreflective material on the ceiling, and on the floor and all the walls, and wrap your chair in it. I might get a retroreflective suit, so I can replace my body with... hang on, my internal censor wants a word ... fur?
Click to expand...

I could buy a 2-man pop up dome tent for twenty five quid and plaster this stuff inside it. My own living room planetarium / ED cockpit.

I'm sold :D
 

Gimi

Gimi
Now this is interesting, more so than the OR to me at least. With these you can still see your keyboard and other stuff around you, which is important to me. Not sure how this would work in E:D, but this has a lot of potential.
Less immersive than OR I would imagine, but more flexible and relevant to the way I like to play games.

Will watch this one closely.
 

Greeboski

G
interesting . . . but have to agree with jabokai in that it is still too much effort and as such it's not an ''out of the tin'' gain over OR , which could give funding problems. 18 months too late ? i hope not , but for a comercial product they are going to need carefull ''tin wirding'' and a big box ;)
 

jabokai

jabokai
Greeboski said:
interesting . . . but have to agree with jabokai in that it is still too much effort and as such it's not an ''out of the tin'' gain over OR , which could give funding problems. 18 months too late ? i hope not , but for a comercial product they are going to need carefull ''tin wirding'' and a big box ;)
Click to expand...

castAR has a VR mode too... I will buy whichever of it and Oculus (or something else) gives the best VR experience and is widely supported. Although I have an OR dev kit my loyalty will be to the experience they give, not the company! ;) At the moment I think the castAR VR option is lesser than the proposed consumer OR kit... but as neither are actually out yet, who knows!
 

HaiderGill

H
The reason why I'm keen on CastAR is having had a go on the OR dev kit - I understand it's dev kit - but the image quality needs to be improved by the power of 10 i.e. logarithmically. It gets blurrier and blurrier as you move your eyes away from the center of the image. OR uses lens that allow your eyes to focus on something so close i.e the LCD screens. Unfortunately they are of a very poor quality and cause the image to be blurry. This not something unknown to photographers who talk of edge-sharpness and vignetting. The LCD screens are also poor and cause artifacts to appear. IQ isn't of the quality of a clap-trap monitor This can all be improved but at a big big price increase. There's no free lunch. Yes Leica or the Olympus Zuiko division could knock you up a set of lens and 1080P/4K screens could be put in. How much will this make the rift £1000 and what about the GPU to drive it at a minimum of 60fps per eye? I definitely want to try the IQ of CastAR before commiting to it. I can't believe people are hyping the OR. What exists is poor, pi*s poor for IQ.
 
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Cmdr Eagleboy

Cmdr Eagleboy
HaiderGill said:
. I definitely want to try the IQ of CastAR before commiting to it. I can't believe people are hyping the OR what exists is poor pi*s poor.
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Well, LCD are practically only technology now which scales rather well, and when 4k displays will appear, their production costs will quickly fall.

OR is hyped because it does PR right, and they actually delivered dev kit, and it works as prototype and concept. They actually work on delivering. I think it is justified to follow news about them.
 

HaiderGill

H
jabokai said:
Was the castAR product that you tried much better in VR mode then?
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Hence my comment on CastAR 'I definitely want to try the IQ of CastAR before commiting to it.' After OR I'm a lot more wary of any of this tech, I want to try before I buy. No body mentions how poor the IQ of OR is. It's really blurry when your eye is scanning around...You won't see an enemy ship at distance close to the frame edges, it will just be a be blurry mess, then the artifacts top it off. I was expecting the normal LCD quality which is worse then Plasma:eek:
 

Commander Mick

Commander Mick
I Really Wanted One OF THese Things Beofre It's Kick-Starter Ended.....

HaiderGill said:
Hi Mike (Evans),

Any ideas on CastAR support for ED? http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/technicalillusions/castar-the-most-versatile-ar-and-vr-system

I like the fact that without the VR attachment on you get 3D AR giving you a holodeck with full head-tracking. You can also still see your joystick and throttle. It also has a release date Sept 2014 so it's not vapour-ware.

Thanks
Haider
Click to expand...

But, I just didn't have the money to spare for it just then and now. I'm glad that it looks like they are setting up a shop for them soon. I will definitely buy one as I was sold on this when they said you could play something like the 3D-Holo-Graphic Chess game played on Millienium-Falcon in Star-Wars. You know when Han told C3PO to tell R2D2 to "Let the Wookie win...because droids don't pull other people's arms out of their sockets when they lose..." or words to that effect. Something like actual game. There was also mention of being about to play something like Dungeons & Dragons with holo-graphic figurines in 3D holo-graphic dungeon.

Rog said:
Although it's already been requested, I still think implementation would be fairly straightforward since Oculus Rift support is going in.

Castar looks like a really nice system, and I can see setting up a virtual wrap-around cockpit would be as expensive as unrolling a sheet of the 3M retro-reflective material and using some simple supports.

Quick space sim lash-up with Castar.
Click to expand...

Now I can see how this may be manipulated to work for games such as Elite - Dangerous and Star - Citizen as well.

HaiderGill said:
You create a dome or a box. The material is dirt cheap. Check out what the flightsim guys are planning: -

http://technicalillusions.com/forums/archive/index.php?thread-70.html

Jeri and Rick are very helpful...

You cannot see in the YouTube videos but 3D reaches out in front of you i.e. things come flying to your face like the the 3D theme park rides. It can do 3D from in front to all the way back and into the material.
Click to expand...

Yes, but if you were in a cockpit, thing wouldn't really be flying right into your face. You would or should be behind that see-thru canopy.

Gimi said:
Now this is interesting, more so than the OR to me at least. With these you can still see your keyboard and other stuff around you, which is important to me. Not sure how this would work in E:D, but this has a lot of potential.
Less immersive than OR I would imagine, but more flexible and relevant to the way I like to play games.

Will watch this one closely.
Click to expand...

Well, If you could still see the keyboard and joystick while your using castAR,that would a advantage over Oculus Rift :cool:


jabokai said:
castAR has a VR mode too... I will buy whichever of it and Oculus (or something else) gives the best VR experience and is widely supported. Although I have an OR dev kit my loyalty will be to the experience they give, not the company! ;) At the moment I think the castAR VR option is lesser than the proposed consumer OR kit... but as neither are actually out yet, who knows!
Click to expand...

I would buy one for myself and more for my friends and family (They may be thrilled at this.) unless they do hear about this once it's out on the mass market.

I hope they do plan on selling all the equipment that was available during the Kick-Starter as well and perhaps even improve on it more when this finally goes to the open market :D
 

HaiderGill

H
jabokai said:
castAR has a VR mode too... I will buy whichever of it and Oculus (or something else) gives the best VR experience and is widely supported. Although I have an OR dev kit my loyalty will be to the experience they give, not the company! ;) At the moment I think the castAR VR option is lesser than the proposed consumer OR kit... but as neither are actually out yet, who knows!
Click to expand...

Sorry I didn't realise you had an OR dev kit. I didn't mean to be offensive, I hope none was taken. I'm not knocking the OR dev kit just want people to realise it's not there yet. There is long way to go. I was expecting more since I used to play the VTOL Harrier Jump Jet game in 93: -
'Virtuality Sit Down unit utilizing head-mounted displays (the "Visette") which each contain two LCD screens at resolutions of 276x372 each. Four speakers and a microphone were also built into the unit.[3] The SU units have a Polhemus 'Fast Track' magnetic source built into the waist high ring with a receiver in a free-moving joystick (the "Space Joystick"), while the SD design has the player sitting down with joysticks, a steering wheel, or aircraft yoke for control, depending on the game.'

It was 20 fps 3D and there was head movement lag. I believe it was based around an Amiga 3000. This was 1993 and for 3D graphics you had an FPU (floating point unit) instead of a GPU. I was expecting more a lot more after nearly 10 years. Hopefully now the development of HMDs will accelerate like GPUs


Thanks
Haider
 
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