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Cast AR augmented reality glasses haul in $400K in two days
The Cast AR Kickstarter project coming from two ex-Valve employees reached its $400,000 goal today, after just two days of being open to backers. Cast AR is a pair of augmented reality glasses that project graphics into the real world for multiple players to interact with. Technical Illusions, the duo of Jeri Ellsworth and Rick Johnson, were granted permission to continue the project after being let go by Valve alongside other hardware developers in February. The team set up a few stretch goals to continue funding the glasses after its initial goal: $600,000 will enable the developers to include a "customizable dungeon tile mapper" and reaching the $800,000 mark will add a microphone to the headset. There's plenty of time to reach these stretch goals; the funding campaign will conclude on November 14.
Ex-Valve employees crowdfund augmented reality glasses
Former Valve employees Jeri Ellsworth and Rick Johnson launched a Kickstarter project to fund the Cast AR augmented reality glasses. The glasses were initially developed while both Ellsworth and Johnson were working at Valve, and Ellsworth was granted permission to keep the AR glasses when she was let go by Valve in February. As our friends at Engadget saw firsthand in May, the Cast AR headset projects visuals into the real world, granting multiple players the ability to interact with any kind of digital object as if it were physically in from of them. Under the moniker Technical Illusions, the duo hopes to bring Cast AR to market by raising $400,000 by November 14, and has already earned $45,930 in its first funding day. Given all the technical terms laid out in the funding campaign page, the developer created a simple pledge calculator to dictate how much money backers should give depending on the pieces of hardware they want, like the additional "Magic Wand" controller hardware.
