Great news for CastAR, the augmented reality system that started as a Valve project, then was handed off by Valve's Gabe Newell to the original developers Jeri Ellsworth and Rick Johnson, who then turned it into a successful Kickstarter, just got $15 million in funding.
Read my original interview with Jeri for this October 2013 post, which lays out her vision for an AR system that can also do VR. Excerpt:
"The tracking on castAR is dead on accurate," as Jeri tells me, "so there are no issues that are found with other head mounted displays like motion sickness." The system enables both augmented reality and full immersive virtual reality, which should increase its appeal on the market...
She also thinks the system will appeal to fans of immersive virtual worlds like Second Life:
For them, she says, "[t]he biggest appeal would be the comfort of the system, because you could wear it for hours without eye strain. The reflective surface [where the image is displayed] is as comfortable as looking at a monitor."
Personally I'm betting more on AR to be mass market, than VR -- the draw of interacting with virtual content with actual people right next to you is more consistent with the appeal of videogames or for that matter games in general.
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