VR is on everyone's minds. Facebook made big waves with its $2 billion purchase of Oculus VR. Just before that, Sony's big reveal of Project Morpheus at GDC. That wasn't the only new player in San Francisco that week, however. Canadian company Sulon Technologies debuted its Cortex virtual reality hardware at the Game Developer's Conference, showing off a technology that separates it from Oculus Rift and CastAR. Instead, it incorporates elements of both virtual reality and augmented reality.
What the Cortex goggle headset does differently is that it takes into account your surroundings to create a virtual space. Rather than use a gamepad to move and navigate the world, you physically move within your real life space. There is a spatially aware camera and other sensors that capture your surroundings, which you can see when wearing the Cortex, and then with a flip of a switch suddenly your surroundings are transformed into a similarly shaped, but still completely differently looking space station… complete with zombie attackers. Our sister site Tom's Guide describes the demo well, as well as the video below.
We had the chance to sit down with Sulon Technologies CEO Dhanushan Balachandreswara to learn more about the Cortex.
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