“We’re going to to see more wearable technology become consumer products. “We’re really living in Year Zero of virtual reality,” Rasmussen giddily tells me. The technology will take some time to trickle down, but Atlas could eventually become a distinct industry parallel to console gaming. I’m pretty excited about meatspace/virtual reality hybrid games and their potential to help us avert a Wall-E future where we just get fatter and fatter watching our screens. “Someone should do Jurassic Park,” Rasmussen says. The plan is to get the system and Unity integration assets to developers so they can start building first-person shooters, fantasy epics, and educational exploration games. Right now Rasmussen is the only one working on Atlas full-time out of the four-person team, but that will change if it meets its $125,000 Kickstarter goal to manufacture the chest mounts and refine the software. Unlike the Virtuix Omni VR treadmill, Atlas not only lets you walk, but also run, jump, crouch and move around like you do in real life. Lucky for Rasmussen, the Oculus Rift took care of the first problem, freeing him up to reimagine real-space positioning. That’s because there weren’t wide-field-of-view head displays with low-latency, head-orientation tracking for under $50,000, and the positioning systems were clumsy and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Real-space VR systems have been around for well over a decade but have been reserved for big research institutions. Since then he’s built and sold a robotic machine tool company called USMechatronics, created the Blood Energy potion drink sold in IV bags, and most recently sold a ghost detector that connects to your iPhone. I thought that only happened in movies,” he tells me. He stitched together an automatic BB gun and a video camera with some home-made machine-vision software to make a weapon worthy of defending your fort. Back in college, Rasmussen was the first person to make an optical-tracking sentry gun. He’s no stranger to making sci-fi dreams come true. “I’ve wanted a Holodeck since I was a kid,” says Atlas inventor and Protagonist founder Aaron Rasmussen. ![]() Chasing aliens or exploring dungeons could become an alternative to going to the gym. Play with Atlas and when you walk forward your in-game avatar walks forward, too. The patent-pending Atlas positioning system maps the markers and uses your phone’s accelerometer and gyroscopes to know where your are. Then you strap on your Oculus Rift VR goggles, an optional Razer Hydra-equipped gun or sword, and the Atlas chest mount for your iPhone.įire up the Oculus and Atlas iPhone app, and step into the future. You can print them at home, but Protagonist plans to give out vinyl ones that stick to the floor so they don’t get displaced. If you’ve got a huge living room it could work, but you’re better off in a garage, on a basketball court or in a warehouse. Here’s how startup Protagonist’s Atlas system works. Protagonist is Kickstarting Atlas to get real-space VR into the hands of developers, so they can build games that ditch joysticks and actually let you run-and-gun. Atlas is a cheap, new “walk-around” virtual reality system that uses markers you put on the ground to track your movements as you play with an Oculus Rift headset. Archenemies for decades, video games and exercise are about to unite.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |