Voxon has been showing off it’s Voxon VX2 VLED technology to create interactive volumetric holograms. It costs $6,800 so it’s definitely not cheap.
It’s likely using a high rpm spinning panel to generate the image which means that dampening the sound of the spinning array, keeping the display carefully synced to avoid pixel drift, and are some of the primary engineering concerns. They do provide a Unity and Blender SDK which is interesting.
Here’s a version of Doom playing on the volumetric display
Google Earth VR was the first mainstream real-world immersive map exploration app for modern PC VR headsets, but the app never made it to the standalone VR headset era. The new app FLYstill uses Google Earth’s 3D map tiles, but brings exploring Google Earth in VR to Quest 2, Quest Pro, Quest 3, and Apple Vision Pro. It even includes the 3D geometry for certain cities.
I wrote about Disney’s VR floor before, now comes VR shoes from FreeAim. They strap to your feet a little like rollerskates. What’s interesting is that the shoes sense where they are and apply small auto-corrections to bring you back to the center of your play space.
It sure seems a bit more viable than some of the treadmill systems like the Kat Walk in which you’re strapped on top of a slick curved surface.
Ryan Trahan used VR goggles and a camera attached to a rig looking down on him from the classic 3rd person game camera location. He then tried to survive the next 50 hours doing everyday things.
It appears to have largely gone comically rough for him. Doors, curbs, playing basketball, manipulating anything small (eating food with utensils, picking up coffees, brushing his teeth) were his worst enemies.
However, I think he might be onto something. It makes me wonder if the camera setup was better and could be moved to left/right so he could see his own hands then someone could likely make a living being a ‘living robot’ who livestreams their life.
Creating Augmented Horror experiences – in your own home
We’ve all seen the low-budget horror movie where a killer chases down their victim in their homes. Imagine if you could don some AR goggles and live that experience in your own home.
David Montecalvo has made a name for himself experimenting with mixed reality experiences. His YouTube videos explore a lot of his interesting ideas such as hoping on a real motorcycle and creating mixed reality teleportation:
He started with the Quest 3 and created experiences as Hauntify and FPS Enhanced Reality in which ghosts and soldiers appear in your home to hunt you. You run around your real-life house trying to escape them. It’s quite amazing and scary:
He recently moved onto the Vision Pro since the Quest 3 has limited augmented reality capabilities. The Vision Pro was better and now he has made an experience of creatures following you in the real world. It reminds me very much like the movie It Follows.
He’s experimented in large outdoor environments like a forest and apparently the Vision Pro does an amazing job automatically mapping the terrain and calculating occlusions and lighting. It’s pretty scary!
While most of VR is focused on creating 3D worlds like we currently know them – some artists are experimenting with mathematically generated audio-visual journeys.
Lanny Smoot is a Disney Research Fellow that is being inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
Here he is showing off his holo-tile floor that allows multiple people to walk on it in any direction and it automatically keeps you centered on the floor. Definitely something that could be used for VR.
VR and AR have been on a tear lately. But one of the things missing from VR is actual physical feedback when interacting with objects. Haptic feedback isn’t new; but the methods used so far are pretty crude. Currently developed/in development systems from Meta and Haptx use tubes with compressed air. The physical limitations of these systems make them expensive, noisy, and bulky. (A recent Apple patent also hints at their methods)
Enter Fluid Reality. They have developed a system that utilizes an electro-osmotically powered array of pixels that are placed on the fingertips in the gloves. These give a sensation of touch feedback by physically raising/lowering the pixels to simulate the surface (rough, smooth, ridges/edges, etc). But they don’t use air, they use liquid. That method means they can use much smaller, solid state osmatic pumps. This means the entire apparatus can likely fit entirely on the hand instead of needing bulky air systems.
Harrison’s team uses liquid to create touch sensations, resulting in a more precise and quieter system compared to conventional VR gloves that run on pressurized air. This technology can generate more complex touch sensations and is based on the principle of electromagnetic induction, using an electromagnetic field to move liquid within the glove’s liquid chambers. A small battery and standard printed circuit board (PCB) hardware are sufficient for the operation of this technology.
They use solid state, electro-osmatic pumps which means they are much cheaper and all the electronics can fit on the hand instead of needing connection to larger external apparatus.
