The startup that created the Glyph headphones surprises with a functional prototype that uses light field technology and in some respects surpasses the Microsoft device.
Avegant, a startup that launched the Glyph headphones with retinal projection, has presented a augmented reality prototype which uses technology of fields of light similar to other companies like Magic Leap. The startup, which started from the experience gained in the creation of Glyph, plans to improve the prototype in order to launch a commercial product. According to The Verge and other people who have been able to test it, the prototype is superior to the development version of HoloLens in some aspects, such as the ability to focus on different objects and the viewing angle, where they indicate that it is lower than the 90º of the Meta2 viewer.
Light field technology works by replicating how the human eye perceives light, recreating the virtual objects and images that are placed in different places in the environment, and we can look at them in the same way as we do with real objects. In addition, since the objects are not built of traditional pixels, but of light that is projected on our retinas, a more real behavior is achieved than that obtained by current viewfinders based on flat screens to achieve stereoscopy.
The Verge has been able to try out several demos consisting of a solar system, an immersion in an ocean environment and a conversation with a virtual person. And according to them, the prototype is somewhat bulky, not very comfortable, it is connected by cable to a PC and the image it produces is perceived sharper and more realistic than HoloLens. The prototype in the demonstration used external cameras to achieve absolute positioning and detect objects such as tables and chairs that were in the room, but it did not allow interacting with the environment as offered by HoloLens thanks to its solid positioning system. This explains the two white balls that we can see above the viewer, as markers. Avegant wants to equip the device with inside-out positioning like Microsoft’s, and is confident that it will be able to achieve this.
