I often say the market for metaverse platforms is about 1 in 4 people on the Internet, since 1 in 4 is roughly how many people enjoy heavily immersive 3D game worlds on their devices. But we are seeing new technology that enables immersion beyond a traditional game/VR device, as with Disney's HoloTile that I blogged last week.
Now comes HoloBike, a new indie project which just launched its Kickstarter*.
The brainchild of engineer/product designer Samuel Matson, who last worked in Google's VR division, the HoloBike basically puts a virtual world on an exercise bike -- without needing a VR headset. (Watch above.)
I recently got a hands-on (feet-on?) demo of the HoloBike, and came away pretty impressed. While focused on the screen, you feel the 3D environment wrapping around your vision, even on the periphery, peacefully enveloping you in the virtual trail ahead of you. While it doesn't provide a full VR effect, it's more than enough for immersion -- and unlike VR, Samuel tells me none of the 100 or so people who've tested it (including some 20 women) have experienced motion sickness using it.
While I'm more of a treadmill/stairs cardio guy, I definitely prefer the HoloBike to the standard boring gym bike experience. And because nearly 200 million people worldwide have a gym membership (counting the 6.5 million people who subscribe to Peleton) it opens up virtual world experiences to a massive new audience -- many or most of whom wouldn't be caught dead playing a AAA videogame.
After the demo, I chatted with Samuel about the technology and its potential -- starting with how the "hologram" effect works:
"We deliver stereoscopic vision with an LCD panel overlaid with a microlens array that delivers separate images to the left and right eye image."
Unlike 3D movies, he adds, "we use a sight tracking camera to detect the rider's viewing angle and IPD so the rendered scene responds correctly with sub-millimeter accuracy for the full 6DoF sense of looking through a portal. So rather than a typical 3D movie which is stereoscopic but has a fixed, pre-recorded viewpoint, the HoloBike renders any possible viewpoint in real-time."
Because each HoloBike is connected to the Internet, there's potential to add a multiplayer mode and game-like features in the future, Samuel tells me, and to upload new trail worlds over time.
The trail worlds themselves are actually captured from real life bike paths, with some pretty impressive procedural generation:
"We first scan real life trails to construct volumetric samples of the vegetation, soil, rocks and ground cover," he tells me. "We analyze the patterns of these features in the actual ecosystem - the ratio and density of grass, trees, moss that varies depending on elevation, terrain, sunlight, water bodies. We call this data a 'biome' and combined with satellite elevation data of each trail, we can efficiently generate vast natural scenes."
The HoloBike Kickstarter is offering the cycles at around $2500, roughly around the price of a high-end Peleton. I don't know if this will presage a new way of accessing and experiencing virtual worlds, but I'm hopeful: the Kickstarter raised its $$28,857 target funding goal within 24 hours of launch.
* Affiliate code to HoloBike to help support New World Notes!
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