New wearable to stretch the limits
of experiencing the AR world
The prototype has
a state-of-the-art resolution, field-of-view, tracking sensor and frame rate
The
controller-free VR sensor and gesture recognition
developer, Leap Motion, recently announced Project North Star, its open-source
development kit for an AR headset that it claims will only cost $100 per
headset to build.
Considering North Star’s specs,
its price tag seems almost unbelievable, given that the HoloLens AR headset
costs $3,000. Each of the North Star’s two 3.5-inch screens has a 1600X1440
resolution with 120 fps performance and a 100-degree field-of-view.
These headsets come paired with
Leap Motion sensors used for tracking your hands in real time. The hand
tracking supposedly runs at 150 fps, and at 180 degrees both horizontally and
vertically. Unless you put your hands behind your back, North Star can track
them.
By contrast, Microsoft’s developer
site says that the HoloLens’ ‘maximum supported resolution’ is 1268X720, and
that its recommended frame rate for holograms is 60 fps.
Leap Motion reportedly won’t sell
Project North Star to consumers directly. Instead, company CEO David Holz says
it will “make the hardware and related software open source”, and let
developers make their own affordable AR headsets based on the North Star
template. Of course, the AR headsets that eventually go on sale could be much
more expensive than $100.
The current emphasis on hardware
development aside, Leap Motion primarily focuses its research on gesture
recognition software. The company’s biggest reveal was its design for ‘virtual
wearables’, user interfaces designed for AR that will have you tapping on thin
air to control your apps instead of tapping controller buttons. Like HoloLens,
the third-party offspring of Leap Motion's Project North Star could be years in
the making.
techradar.com
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