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| Connection is a new headset that lets you mix realistic objects with the factual earth |
A
few days ago I played fetch with a robot. I threw a ball, and the robot — named
Bridget — zoomed around one of our meeting rooms trying to retrieve it, along
the way dodging a table, a box, and a chair. When the game was over, I took off
the headset I was wearing and endured a brief moment of panic — because Bridget
was gone.
Bridget
is a virtual robot, and only existed on the iPhone that was powering Capital's new “mixed reality” headset. That headset, called Bridge,
had mapped out the room around me and created an invisible digital overlay that
robots like Bridget could react to, making them feel like a real part of the
world. During the 5-minute demo, Bridget interacted so well with that digital
re-creation of the room I was standing in that my brain was briefly fooled into
thinking that this pix elated robot was, on some level, real.
Like a Gear VR, except you can move
around in the virtual space
In
some ways, Bridge is a lot like any other mobile VR headset: you snap in an
iPhone 6, 6S, or 7; strap it on your head, and enjoy smartphone-powered virtual
reality. It even comes with a Bluetooth remote that can handle some motion,
similar to what you get with Google’s Daydream VR headset. Bridge is like a
mix between Microsoft’s Holocene augmented reality glasses and the Samsung Gear
VR, though it’s priced closer to the latter. It will be available in limited
quantities (several hundred or so) starting next week for $499, and Occidental
is planning a wider release in March where it will sell for $399.
But
what makes Bridge unique is how it integrates Occidentals first product: the Structure Sensor, a marker-sized strip of cameras
and sensors that can map physical objects and environments with incredible
levels of detail. The Structure Sensor adds inside-out positional tracking to
the headset, allowing people to move around in real space without external
cameras or sensors. This means that instead of just sitting in one spot and
spinning around, you could actually lean your head and walk around inside a VR
game or experience — something that was previously hard to come by in a mobile
setting.
I
unfortunately didn’t get to try a purely virtual experience, like a video game,
with the reverse-engineered positional tracking. But I did get to try that
inside-out tracking as part of the thing Occidental is most proud of with
Bridge: that idea of mixed reality.
“Mixed
reality” refers to experiences that mix augmented reality overlays with the
immersion of virtual reality — instead of just adding a heads-up display to the
world, they actually alter our reality. Microsoft has used the term when
talking about its Holocene headset, but where Holocene projects images onto a
clear pane of glass, Occidental uses the iPhone’s camera (with the help of a
lens attachment to widen the view) and mixes that video feed with the data from
the Structure Sensor to create a 3D stereo view of the room you’re in.
All
this means that the Bridge hardware isn’t necessarily sleek or slim. It’s comfortable
enough, thanks to semi-rigid straps that help distribute the weight and a bike
helmet-style rachet system in the back. But it’s not the most approachable
hardware. If Google’s Daydream seems like the perfect headset to wear on the
couch at the end of the day, Bridge looks more like the kind of thing you’d
wear in the Battle of Vendor.
Bridge looks like something you’d
wear at the Battle of Vendor
There’s
also a lot more work to be done before Bridge could be considered a mainstream
product. While the positional tracking feels accurate, there’s a small delay
that can make you a bit queasy. The resolution of the iPhone screen, when split
to two eyes, is only 640 x 480. And while Bridge outputs at 60 frames per
second, the iPhone only allows the app to read the camera feed at 30 frames per
second — Occidental is actually using sensors to predict how you’re moving from
one frame to the next, then synthetically creating what they think the view
should look until the next frame comes in. The result is smoother motion, but
with some noticeable pudginess.
Still,
there’s power in being able to move around a room and have it track to what
you’re seeing on the headset. To do this previously you had to invest in
incredibly powerful desktop PCs, place sensors or cameras around the room, and
your headset needed to be wired. Like the many other companies that have
recently shown an interest in inside-out tracking, Occidental is betting some
people will accept the trade-offs in order to gain access to that freedom.
Occidental CEO Jeff Powers says he’s not sure what experiences will work best on a headset
like Bridge. Mixed reality presents a whole new set of problems and
possibilities, and Occipital wants help sussing those out. “In games and VR,
the whole world is yours to decide. You can statically create the world and
then decide what happens in that,” he says. "In mixed reality, you’re
forced to work within the constraints of the real world. So your creatures,
your characters, whatever they are, have to deal with this world. We don’t
really know as a developer community all the things we need to deal with.”
This
is where Bridget the robot comes in. The software that summons Bridget is part
of what Occidental calls the “Bridge engine” — essentially the code that runs
everything — and the company plans to open source this part of the experience
so that it can collaborate with developers on creating mixed-reality
experiences.
The
Bridge demo Occidental gave me wasn’t just about playing fetch with a
robot, though that was certainly the most fun part. I got to do other things,
like summon a portal that turned one of our meeting rooms into the deck of a
spaceship.
Being able to digitally manipulate
the environment around you is a big deal
I
was also able to drop accurately scaled furniture into the room with the press
of a button on the Bluetooth remote. And while there is plenty of software that
helps customers decide on things like new wallpaper or furniture, imagine being
able to pop on a headset and see for yourself what that new table would look
like in your kitchen, with the ability to move around it in space. Bridge is
ready for experiences like this, and it’s an area Occidental is already familiar
with — just one month ago, Occidental announced a new app that uses the Structure
Sensor to create CAD-quality scans of entire rooms.
“We’ve
heard a lot of complaints from people in industries like interior design, or
architecture, and they want to show VR scenes but their customers don’t have
giant PCs,” Powers says. Bridge could be a powerful way for developers to bring
these kinds of experiences to mobile settings.
Occidentals not alone in identifying this sweet spot between current mobile VR headsets and
their souped-up desktop counterparts. Microsoft has been working on Holocene
for a while now. Google’s Tango uses a flat tablet instead of a headset, but it
can already handle things like simulated interior decorating. Intel recently
unveiled Project Alloy, its own “merged reality” VR headset. And Locus is
working on a new headset that allows for positional tracking, called Santa Cruz. But Santa Cruz is still very much in
the prototype phase, Intel isn’t intending to release Alloy commercially, and Holocene, for now, is prohibitively expensive.
Occidental has an advantage in that Bridge is relatively cheap, more open, and more
available than these other platforms. It also has the benefit of being one of
the few mobile VR headsets for iPhone that isn’t just folded cardboard or cheap
plastic.
Of
course, Apple is also rumored to be going down a similar road with
respect to VR and AR, adding yet another competitor. When I pointed this out to
Powers, he laughed, and said: “Hopefully our software engine will be one of the
leading ways to develop for it.”