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Ex-Valve Employees Launch 3D AR & VR Headset Kickstarter

By - Source: Polygon | B 12 comments
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Ex-Valve employees are bringing their headset project to Kickstarter.

Back in February, Valve fired approximately 25 employees. Two of those employees were Jeri Ellsworth and Rick Johnson, who were working on an augmented reality headset project at the company. Due to Valve boss Gabe Newell's generosity, Ellsworth and Johnson were allowed to leave the company with ownership of their project. 

Today, Ellsworth and Johnson have turned to Kickstarter to bring their product to the market. castAR is a 3D AR & VR headset.

"castAR is a projected augmented reality system that displays holographic-like 3D projections right in front of you," states the Kickstarter page. "Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope sparked our imaginations of what might be possible in the future by showing R2-D2 and Chewbacca playing a holographic 3D chess-style game. It has taken nearly 35 years since the film was released for this technological dream to come to reality, but with castAR, that reality can be yours." 

The castAR will come with the glasses, an AR & VR clip (one that allows the glasses to display true VR and AR without an additional head mount), a tracking camera, an RFID tracking grid, and a magic wand that functions as a joystick and 3D input device.  

On the software side, developers will access the castAR software development kit, unity integration, and demo projects. There's a possibility that castAR will have additional engine support as well as support for existing VR applications. 

castAR is asking for only $400,000, though it seems likely they'll raise the price over that amount. At the time of this article, the project's already raised  $230,000.

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  • -2 Hide
    maxiim , October 14, 2013 5:32 PM
    Valve fires people? O.O
  • 2 Hide
    photonboy , October 14, 2013 5:41 PM
    That's nice of Gabe Newell.

    Seriously, how many companies not only innovate as he does but would also allow employees to take their work with them.

    By "fired" I believe it means "laid off" due to restructuring which is common.

    I'm not sure why they'd concentrate on a VR headset with the Occulus VR already in development but I guess competition is a good thing.
  • 3 Hide
    Lord Captivus , October 14, 2013 5:43 PM
    This article would be a good place to insert a link to the kickstarter project...right?
  • Display all 12 comments.
  • 2 Hide
    yolosweg , October 14, 2013 6:01 PM
    praise the lord gaben
  • 0 Hide
    _Cosmin_ , October 15, 2013 12:15 AM
    By him let them go with the project... shows how confident it was on that project (in)success.
  • 0 Hide
    rwinches , October 15, 2013 2:11 AM
    http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/technicalillusions/castar-the-most-versatile-ar-and-vr-system
  • 0 Hide
    cats_Paw , October 15, 2013 5:23 AM
    I think occulus will take the market as its already well in development, but yeah, competition aint a bad thing.
  • 0 Hide
    velosteraptor , October 15, 2013 8:41 AM
    Quote:
    This article would be a good place to insert a link to the kickstarter project...right?


    In the second paragraph, the word 'kickstarter' is a link to the page... took me a few minutes to notice it.
  • 0 Hide
    sean1357 , October 15, 2013 8:46 AM
    eMagin already has this for years. OLED with motion sensor mouse.
  • 0 Hide
    michaelssw , October 15, 2013 8:55 AM
    I didn't see the link either but it's embeded in the word Kickstarter. Unless they just edited the article.
  • 0 Hide
    jimmysmitty , October 15, 2013 1:10 PM
    Quote:
    That's nice of Gabe Newell.

    Seriously, how many companies not only innovate as he does but would also allow employees to take their work with them.

    By "fired" I believe it means "laid off" due to restructuring which is common.

    I'm not sure why they'd concentrate on a VR headset with the Occulus VR already in development but I guess competition is a good thing.


    That's another reason why I love VALVe. They focus on consumers and don't screw people over.

    I just wish they would focus a bit more on those of us who want a new Half Life. I am sure they are probably working on it with Source 2 but the wait is killer. VALVe always has a way of making a game fun and have a great story.

    I just want to kill some more Combine jerks.
  • 0 Hide
    photonboy , October 15, 2013 5:15 PM
    Quote:
    Quote:
    That's nice of Gabe Newell.

    Seriously, how many companies not only innovate as he does but would also allow employees to take their work with them.

    By "fired" I believe it means "laid off" due to restructuring which is common.

    I'm not sure why they'd concentrate on a VR headset with the Occulus VR already in development but I guess competition is a good thing.


    That's another reason why I love VALVe. They focus on consumers and don't screw people over.

    I just wish they would focus a bit more on those of us who want a new Half Life. I am sure they are probably working on it with Source 2 but the wait is killer. VALVe always has a way of making a game fun and have a great story.

    I just want to kill some more Combine jerks.


    re: Half-Life 3
    “I can’t confirm all too much since the development is still in early stages, but for now I can confirm that we are going to release on both current and next generation consoles and we will also release the game on our own platform exclusively for PC and Mac… We hope to have the first trailer ready for E3 2014, which we (after several times not attending) will finally come back to.”

    Gabe Newell confirmed that info, and it's generally speculated that a 2014 Q4 release will happen (so a year from now).

    I believe "own platform" may mean not only the regular Steam game service but possibly SteamOS boxes. In fact, releasing HL3 on Steambox would give a lot of publicity to launch the new platform/service.

    They should also have the new Steam controller out by then.