Gadgetory

hey 1 i'm steve from gamers nexus dotnet and we're wrapping up our pax prime 2015 coverage one of the last items we looked at today was cast AR which is an augmented reality solution so this is different than what we've looked at with HTC vive or oculus rift for instance which are both VR or virtual reality solutions with a are you still see and can interact with the outside world so it's not as isolating as VR and with cast a are specifically we're using glasses so you put the glasses on there are two high refresh rate flickering lenses in those glasses so 120 Hertz on the refresh rate from memory and then atop the lenses are two projectors and the projectors shoot down whatever your plane at a surface based on what you're looking and the surface that is used for cast AR is a reflective material so this is similar to what's found on running shoes for instance so you project it down on the surface and then you can move around to move how the image is projected and where it lands on that surface which makes it a little bit unique and a couple of the unique challenges faced by VR would include hand modeling so NVR you obviously you can't see your own hands because you have a head-mounted display on and this is problematic because there's an information conveyance disconnect in your brain when you're trying to interact with a game another challenge is multiplayer not really good to try and add another person to the environment when you're both wearing a head-mounted completely isolating displays so that is something you generally lose with VR solutions with ar you're more limited in your types of games you can support in theory but they're generally a little easier to develop from what we've looked at and they have a unique slant so bringing board games for example dnd magic the gathering or more traditional stuff like battleship we saw a demo for Jenga we saw a demo for and older PC games that have been around for a while like marble madness you can do all that in AR and then interact with it on the surface of the table using a wand controller so that's what we did we have some b-roll footage of all of that that should be showing throughout the video if you're curious what it looks like we tried to capture through the actual lens of the device which was a challenge but none of this is rendered footage so this is what it kind of looks like although in reality obviously you've got a bit more three-dimensional depth and some more vertical height and things like that you can perceive with your own eyes so that is cast AR it's pretty interesting technology we actually did like it a lot and if you check the link in the description below you'll see an article from one of our editors who goes more into the technical detail how it works and what its applications are you can see more about cast a are going forward so CES will have the max the next major update to the technology and then it's shipping sometime in 2016 so that is all for the cast a our video coverage link in the description below for the full technical details and use case scenarios things like that and we'll see you all next time