WCVRI: Hands-on with new North Star headset, Virtualizer 2, Pareal VR and more!

At WCVRI, I have tried some cool AR/VR hardware. Let me tell you my first hands-on impressions on it!

North Star AR headset

Project North Star is an opensource reference design for a wide-FOV augmented reality headset that Leap Motion (now Ultraleap) has given to the community. The project is very interesting, but unluckily the pieces that compose this device are difficult to find and the hardware is not easy to be assembled.

But there are some people that are trying to take this big project on their shoulders. In March, in Shenzhen, I have met Noah Zerkin, a genius that has found a way to transform this project from some documents on GitHub to a real headset. The 3D-printed headset felt very rough, but it could already showcase its big potential. In Nanchang, I’ve met Noah again and he made me and Max try his new version of Project North Star.

In these months, the project has made various steps forward. The 3D printed frames are more polished, and the headset looks more elegant and durable. It looks more like a product and less like a hacked device. Noah also took it around with a super-elegant suitcase.

To improve the design of the product, Noah has been forced to reduce a bit the FOV of the headset, that is now “only” between 90 and 100 degrees. Keep in mind that Magic Leap One has a diagonal FOV of 50° and you realize why the word “only” is between quotes. I have not noticed this decrease in FOV from my tests.

The hand tracking was fabulous as always thanks to Leap Motion and its Orion tracking. I wonder why Leap Motion doesn’t give this f***ing genius of Noah a Leap Motion v2 to embed into this headset. The big tracking FOV of Leap Motion v2 would marry perfectly with the big visual FOV of this headset.

Positional tracking was still handled through an Occipital sensor. Tracking was good, but not perfect. When I moved into space, I could see the holograms moving and not staying fixed in place, but when I didn’t move, they had no jitter. Not bad at all for a device that is hacked.

https://gfycat.com/amazingnaughtyharrier-augmented-reality

Noah made me try a demo where I could interact with some simple UI elements, pinch a cube and also move some little galaxies. The ability to use my own hands to interact with holograms, with such a huge FOV was very immersive. I really loved every second spent in the North Star headset. I’m not joking… it is one of the best experiences that I had in an AR headset.

It has been great to see how the system is evolving, and Noah is transforming it into a product. The real problem remains the big cable that comes out from the headset and that must be plugged into a computer. If Noah manages to make a miracle and make it connect directly to a smartphone (maybe with the help of Qualcomm?), then this device can really be something that can appeal XR developers and makers from all over the world. Keep up the great work, Noah!

Pareal VR glasses

I made a short session with Pareal VR glasses. These glasses are very similar to the Huawei VR glasses and show similar characteristics: phone connectivity, trendy and light design, 3DOF tracking.

I would have wanted to like them as the one made by Huawei, but unluckily, the visuals had so big distortions that it was difficult to appreciate them. Furthermore, there was a big light leak from below the glasses. I tried asking for some details about this headset, but at the booth, no one was able to speak English.

On Wechat, I have been able to speak later on with a spokesperson from Pareal that told me amazing news. He told me that Pareal is learning a lot from the feedback on this first version of the glasses, and is already working on a second version, that they plan to put on Kickstarter. It will still be a 3DOF headset that must be connected to the phone, but with no distortions, 1600×1600 resolution per eye, 90 FOV, integrated audio, the possibility to correct the vision of your eyes directly on the lenses (like Huawei glasses), and price less than $200. If they manage to do this, and if it will be compatible with all modern phones from all brands then I think that the 3 DOF VR market could be disrupted. As I’ve said while reviewing the Huawei VR glasses, after having tried this light and trendy design, I’m less interested in a shoebox like Oculus Go.

Good luck to Pareal for this project!

(If you’re interested in knowing more about them, this is their website)

Insta360 Go

I have been able to take in my hand an Insta360 Go. It is a camera so little that it was big as my thumb.

I couldn’t try it live, but there was exhibited a video shot with it and the colors and the resolution appeared great to me. I also learned that it can be easily connected to the smartphone through its case that can be plugged to the USB C port of the phone.

This is not a VR device, but it is cool anyway 🙂

Virtualizer 2

In my life, I have tried only one VR treadmill (at Gamescom), but I had never been able to try the famous Virtuix Omni and Virtualizer… until last week.

I have waited in line a lot to finally try the Virtualizer, especially because after having interviewed the CEO of the company some months ago, I really wanted to try this walking pod. The Virtualizer 2 features a motion platform, that changes its angle so that to help you in walking. These are the words of the CEO Holger Hager that describe the advantage of a similar approach:

The implemented 2 DoF Motion Platform directly addresses both of these points. When walking forward, the platform is elevated in front of the user, which allows for an easy gliding and thus dramatically reduces both the physical effort as well as the required learning phase. With the right angle chosen, it is no longer required to push your hips forwards in order to initiate walking in the Virtualizer. This makes using the product a lot simpler and more intuitive. Very importantly, the angle of inclination can be adjusted easily according to the user‘s preferences. This allows us to make walking in VR easy for anyone, independently of height, size, weight, age, etc.

Holger Hager

To try the Virtualizer I had to enter its special harness and also wear some dedicated slippers onto my shoes. After that, I have been able to try its demo, that made me walk in a room and grab some objects.

I have to say that my experience has not been fantabulous. First of all, the choice of the demo program has been very weird. To make people appreciate a treadmill, you have to make them walk in a big open space, not in a 3m x 3m virtual room, where after two steps you have reached the walls! :O This way, I couldn’t experience how walking was, because I had to rotate after having taken just one or two steps in every direction.

In any case, while I think that the moving platform had really helped me in walking and I have welcomed this innovation, I still found moving on the Virtualizer 2 closer to sliding on ice than to actual walking. The walking movement felt more natural than the one of the treadmill that I tried at Gamescom, but it was distant from the walking movement that I do in real life. I think that walking on this kind of devices needs a training phase because the sensation is always the one of walking on a slippery floor. I had the sensation that I could fall down at every step… I think that Cyberith has to continue improving its product until this sensation disappears.

Shadow Creator Action 1 Pro

Shadow Creator is a very active Chinese manufacturer of AR/VR headsets. You may remember it because some months ago it claimed having designed a competitor of the Oculus Quest… even if my hands-on with the headset was not so great.

At WCVRI, the company took various devices, and I tried the Action 1 Pro. It is an augmented reality headset, that is more or less a competitor of the HoloLens. I have had problems in asking the specifications, but I found some details on the website: it is an all-in-one system mounting a Snapdragon 835, it has a FOV of 45° and 720p of resolution per eye. I will report here my first impressions.

The headset looks somewhat similar to HoloLens 1 in everything: the optics, the field of view, the holograms. Probably Shadow Creator took inspiration from Microsoft device when designing it.

Before trying it, I imagined it being a bad clone, but actually it surprised me being a good device. The holograms had good colors, the FOV is in line with HL 1 (a bit more, actually), the fit on my head was not bad at all. The virtual elements were semi-transparent exactly as with all other AR headsets on the market. The audio was integrated in the headset. The design, even if it looked a bit plasticky, was ok to me. It seems a HoloLens mixed with a ski goggle.

What was inferior to Microsoft’s headset was, of course, the tracking. Microsoft has worked on this for years, and has some of the best experts working on it, while other companies have just started digging into the problem. The Action 1 Pro is no exception to this: when I moved or rotated my head, the objects moved and noticeably jittered… but they returned into place as soon as I stopped. The effect is not as big as to make the experience unusable, but it can break the sense of presence.

What I loved was the idea of letting you use your hands to interact with objects. In the demo, I could see some cartoon planets around me, and I could touch and pinch them to activate some fancy animations. The problem is that the hands tracking was very rough, not even comparable to the one of Leap Motion. The system had serious problems in detecting my correct hand pose, and this made the interaction frustrating.

The Action 1 Pro is on the market for 13000RMB, circa $1850. Considering that its price is much lower than the one of HL and ML, it is a device that may have sense considering for some simple experiences. I asked if it is on sale only in China, and they told me that it is actually available worldwide. If you’re interested, this is the official website.

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And that’s it! I would have liked to try even more experiences at WCVRI, but I was too busy at my stand, as I’ve detailed in this other post.

I hope you have enjoyed these hands-on reviews and if you have any questions or comments, feel free to post them here or on my social media channels!