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Meta's augmented reality glasses are almost ready for developers
With all the attention Meta has been giving its $3,000 smart glasses prototype, you'd be forgiven if you thought the company and let its original Kickstarter design fall to the wayside. Forgiven, but wrong. Last May, the firm asked developers to help it build the world's most advanced augmented reality solution, promising developer kits for roughly half the price of Google's glass. Now that unit is almost ready to ship out -- we dropped by the company's booth at Augmented Reality Expo to see how it's shaped up.
The Daily Roundup for 06.06.2013
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Hands-on with Meta 1, a 3D augmented reality headset with a natural UI (video)
Augmented reality is the future, or at least the proliferation of AR apps and hardware seems to indicate that'll be the case. Meta revealed its own augmented reality device, called Meta 1, in January and is currently in the midst of a Kickstarter campaign to ramp up manufacturing and get it to the people. If the headset looks familiar, that's because its hardware is: it's comprised, in no small part, of Epson and SoftKinetic gear. It utilizes the 960 x 540 binocular 3D displays from Epson's Moverio glasses and the depth sensor sitting atop them comes from SoftKinetic. Of course the glasses you see are but a first generation and are wired to a battery pack worn around the waist -- the company's currently working on slimming things down with customized eyewear that'll be revealed later this year, however. For now, the dev kit and the still-in-development Unity-based SDK are slated to ship in September, but we got to see some of what Meta 1 can do a bit early.
Insert Coin: Meta 1 marries 3D glasses and motion sensor for gesture-controlled AR
In Insert Coin, we look at an exciting new tech project that requires funding before it can hit production. If you'd like to pitch a project, please send us a tip with "Insert Coin" as the subject line. Now that Google Glass and Oculus Rift have entered the zeitgeist, might we start to see VR and AR products popping up on every street corner? Perhaps, but Meta has just launched an interesting take on the concept by marrying see-through, stereoscopic, display glasses with a Kinect-style depth sensor. That opens up the possibility of putting virtual objects into the real world, letting you "pick up" a computer-generated 3D architectural model and spin it around in your hand, for instance, or gesture to control a virtual display appearing on an actual wall. To make it work, you connect a Windows PC to the device, which consists of a pair of 960 x 540 Epson displays embedded in the transparent glasses (with a detachable shade, as shown in the prototype above), and a depth sensor attached to the top. That lets the Meta 1 track your gestures, individual fingers and walls or other physical surfaces, all of which are processed in the PC with motion tracking tech to give the illusion of virtual objects anchored to the real world. Apps can be created via Unity3D and an included SDK on Windows computers (other platforms will arrive later, according to the team), with developers able to publish their apps on the upcoming Meta Store. The group has launched the project on Kickstarter with the goal of raising $100,000 to get developer kits into the hands of app coders, and though it's no Google, Meta is a Y Combinator startup and has several high-profile researchers on the team. As such, it's asking for exactly half of Glass' Explorer Edition price as a minimum pledge to get in on the ground floor: $750. Once developers have had their turn, the company will turn its attention toward consumers and more sophisticated designs -- so if you like the ideas peddled in the video, hit the source to give them your money.
