Motion Sensor VR Headset

Hello Virtual Reality freaks! It’s been a good year for our favorite technology; as we have seen in this blog VR has been invading our day to day lives in more ways than one, from resurrecting dead icons to training our doctors, and from the barracks to our living rooms!

Although traditionally we have thought of VR as a ways of enhancing leisurely visual experiences, most of the posts on this blog have been more centered on how it is making our lives better and how virtual reality can actually sharpen our real world skills. Nonetheless last week we went back to the basics, focusing on Sony’s VR headset for our personal use. As you recall this device essentially projects the same thing a TV monitor would, and the headset would simply serve to enhance your viewer experience.

This week I want to talk about something very similar yet much more sophisticated. There is another headset that’s designed for personal that has not yet hit the market. This headset is much more elaborate in that it has motion sensors that track the direction in which you are facing. The idea is that when you place the headset on your head you are immersed in a world in which you have to literally look around in order to view what is being projected, as opposed to just simply look at something that’s pre-recorded in an enclosed environment, as in the case with Sony’s unit.

The headset I am talking about does not have a name, it’s still a prototype. It was developed by Id software founder John Carmack, maker of famous video games such as Quake and Doom. The headset was being used to enhance and promote the launch of Doom 3 at the recent E3 Expo, the world’s premier video game convention.

Doom 3 is the third installment in the First-person shooter (FPS) series. The headset required users to look around in order to find enemies and to aim properly at their targets. The following article (Click Here for Article) summarizes how this is performed: “the HMZ-T1 offers a 45-degree viewing angle, creating the impression of a 3D screen floating in space in front of you. Carmack's device has a 90-degree viewing angle, almost fully encompassing your forward field of vision. It puts you inside the image”.

Although the buzz on this new headset will surely be about the potential it has specifically on video game enhancement, it will probably need to incorporate a broader use (like Sony’s version) in order to sell adequately. Nonetheless what I think is remarkable about this product is that it is incorporating much more sophisticated technology than I would have expected. I suspect, for example, that the military must be using something similar in the headsets they provide their soldiers for training. In order for soldiers to properly use their headsets to simulate combat situations they have to be able to look around and find their targets, as in Doom. If you haven’t read our articles on VR and military training I suggest you do.

Whether John Carmack’s headset or not sells well I cannot say. It really depends on price vs. value. Regardless of its impact in the market what we must really focus on is how far VR technologies have gone outside leisurely use. VR headsets have been around since I can remember, and only now are they becoming accessible enough to have in our homes. The wait has been worthwhile though as the functional development of VR will make the leisure version of it that much more enjoyable and useful for us when it reaches our homes in the very near future.