Shadow Creator Halomini

Attempting to compete with HoloLens

Augmented reality is certainly making its presence felt at this week's CES Asia technology show in Shanghai. AR has stepped out of the shadows and is just as prevalent on the exhibition floor as VR. Unfortunately some AR experiences fail to impress if you've already sampled the top-of-the-line AR headsets.

At first glance Shadow Creator's Halomini looks for all the world like Microsoft's HoloLens, but with a 7500 Yuan (AU$1500) price tag it's around half the price of Microsoft's slick augmented reality headset. Like the HoloLens, the Halomini is completely wireless with a built-in computer – although it runs on Android 6.0 instead of Windows. Unlike the HoloLens, the Halomini only features a single tracking camera on the front so it knows what you're looking at.

Like the HoloLens, the Halomini projects images onto the visor in front of your eyes, a bit like a fighter pilot's heads-up display which adds tactical information to their view of the sky. The Halomini matches the HoloLens' narrow 40-degree horizontal field of vision, but Shadow Creator is preparing to release the new Air model which is lighter, looks more like traditional glasses and offers a wider 60-degree field of vision.

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Amazon M/R

Amazon Web Services is getting into Mixed Reality


Amazon is building a new “two pizza team” within Amazon Web Services focused on mixed-reality technology, another sign that the cloud powerhouse is expanding its reach and branching out into new areas.

AWS isn’t talking publicly about the initiative, but a job posting for a software engineer sheds some light on the team’s goals. The posting says the company is “building a set of services, and platform to bring AWS and Amazon into the world of Mixed Reality.”

The company wants engineers with experience in “Computer Vision, 3D objects, rendering and data storage by designing, developing and testing software solutions.” The posting further states that “applications would include real-time 3D modeling, image and video stream processing all within a scalable distributed environment.”

The posting calls the group a “true start-up within AWS (a real two pizza team).” The two-pizza term goes back to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, and his well-known rule that any team or meeting that can’t be fed with two pizzas is too large.

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One of our Programmer / Analysts, Jeff Paxson, created the "Atom Visualizer" learning application in Unity. He constructed an interactive Periodic Table of Elements. He used the table that was requested by the subject matter expert(s). When an element was selected, each one had a visual representation along with its proper number of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Once that was deployed for WebGl, he made a version for the HoloLens. This included speech recognition with its custom UI and gesture recognition to move and rotate the element.

Cardboard M/R Headset

While the world catches up with VR, imperfect but affordable options for entry like Google Cardboard and Samsung’s Gear VR will get the job done. But augmented/mixed reality is also proving itself to be a ripe new field and for anyone looking to dip their toes in the water of this brave new world, the Holokit has come to save the day.

Like Google Cardboard, the Holokit uses a cardboard frame to house a smartphone. Two mirrors reflect what appears on your smartphone onto an angled Fresnel lens. Unlike Google Cardboard, you want to see through this setup because you’re mixing reality with imagery coming from your phone. Unfortunately, like Cardboard, there’s no headstrap. But you can always make your own. Open source tracking software will be released on Github along with the headset on June 6, 2017.

Amber Garage is a startup focused on augmented reality. Its founder Botao Hu showed off the little DIY kit this week at the Augmented World Expo. A price hasn’t been announced yet but it seems reasonable to say it’ll cost more than the $15 that Google Cardboard does and less than the $100 or so that headsets like Gear VR go for.

Checking out the video demonstration, it’s safe to say that this will be a big step down from an actual Hololens but the lowest tier development kits for that device for $3000. It’s hard to say if what you see is going to look totally bootleg or if it’s just tough to capture with a camera. Probably a little of both. Regardless, I like the low-res vibe.

Holokits from Fengyuan Zhu on Vimeo.

This is a perfect way for developers to tinker around with the technology without having to make such a major investment. I’m sure the lawyers at the software giant will be taking some issue with that name but Microsoft’s developers should seriously consider making one of these themselves. I look forward to playing with all the stuff you guys make for this thing. Check it out for yourself in the video below and it should be available here on June 6th.

Dell M/R Headset

Dell Enters the Game.

Dell is yet another hardware company that has partnered with Microsoft to deliver an affordable mixed reality headset. Once again, the styling is overall similar to the others, but with a white color scheme sets it apart.

Microsoft says Dell's headset is "uniquely focused on user comfort" and is designed by the same team that builds the company's XPS and Alienware PCs. It has replaceable cushions for a custom fit and a weight balanced headband that is centered on the user's head for long-term comfort. There is also a flip-up visor and cable routing that keeps wires out of the way.

This one will be available sometime this holiday season.

Asus M/R Headset

         Asus Enters Mixed Reality

Asus is also embracing Microsoft's initiative, and the VR category as a whole. Adding to its Oculus-ready ROG gaming desktops and VR-ready Vivo PC X is a mixed reality headset with a futuristic design. While similar in style to the ones offered by Acer and HP, a polygonal 3D cover panel helps set this apart from the pack.

It also features an ergonomically adjustable strap to enable one-handed setup.

"Asus is engaged with Microsoft to make this HMD fast, powerful, and ultra-light with a six degrees of freedom (DOF) tracked motion controller, for an incredible, immersive MR experience," Microsoft says.

Beyond that, we don't have any hardware specifications for this headset, though we imagine the spec sheet will read the same as the other two, or at least be similar.