Remember the castAR glasses? The project is being developed by former Valve employees, and they aim to bring one of the most complete augmented reality platforms to market. Their Kickstarter campaign was very successful, and although deliveries are a bit delayed, this new video gives us an idea of what to expect when the software and hardware are up to the task.
The Origins
It all started when Jeri Ellsworth (the mind behind the C64 DTV) and Rick Johnson left Valve to start a personal project. Shortly after, Gabe Newell's company began to experiment with virtual reality, but Ellsworth and Johnson's plans were more focused on augmented reality. And so castAR was born: a pair of glasses with picoprojectors on top, responsible for emitting a stereoscopic image onto a compatible surface. castAR launched a Kickstarter campaign seeking at least 400,000 dollars to move to the next phase; however, consumers decided to contribute more than a million.
Recent Progress
This happened in November 2013, and since then, those responsible for castAR, under the name Technical Illusions, moved to Silicon Valley and received additional funding. The first developer units (or rather, those who paid 900 dollars for them) are already on their way, and the next step is to start working on more polished prototypes. During the last CES, Ellsworth and Johnson explained some of the design problems they had to solve (from uncomfortable glasses that pinched the nose to connectors that didn't stay anchored properly), but they also shared important advances, such as the reduction in the weight of the glasses (now 85 grams) and the integration of the Unity engine into castAR's official SDK.
Current Status and Pricing
The video was published to celebrate the first shipments of the experimental glasses, and although not everything shown there is real, some of the contributors indicated that the father's experience at the desktop and the girl playing with the paper airplane are very close to the current state. Both the glasses and their accessories are available for pre-order through the official site. The price of each castAR unit is 400 dollars, while one of the most interesting optional accessories is the adapter that turns the glasses into something more like a VR headset for 85 dollars.
Official site: Technical Illusions
