Ex-Valve Employees Launch 3D AR & VR Headset Kickstarter
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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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.
In the second paragraph, the word 'kickstarter' is a link to the page... took me a few minutes to notice it.
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.
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.