Friday, January 2, 2015

"Secretive Military Tech Company Announces Augmented Reality Glasses For Consumers"

Goodbye Google Glass, we hardly knew ye.
We have dozens of links on Virtual Reality but a couple of the more interesting involve Pearson PLC, see below.

From Forbes:
For the past six years, low-key Osterhout Design Group has been building heavy duty smart glasses for the military. But after seeing the kind attention heaped onto gadgets like Google Glass, the small San Francisco-based company is looking towards the consumer market and thinks it has something better to offer the world.

For less than $1,000, ODG plans on releasing a more consumer-friendly version of its glasses in 2015. The glasses can do everything its military-grade specs can do—display high-definition video, record video, lay visuals over the real world—but will be 30 percent smaller and 20 percent lighter, and they’ll look a little less awkward. The most recent version of ODG’s smart glasses, released last year, are bulkier and more rugged to fit with military equipment specification, and cost around $5,000 a piece.

ODG’s augmented reality glasses come packed with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 processor; Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and a global navigation satellite system; and sensors for figuring out where you’re looking. The operating system ODG uses is a modified version of Android to make sure, for example, an Android update button doesn’t pop up while you’re driving down a freeway with the glasses on. Battery life is variable depending on how they’re being used but can range from an hour or two to nearly all day on a single charge.
The glasses can do pretty much anything a tablet can do. Watching a movie on the glasses is something akin to watching a high-def movie on a 65-inch TV from across the room. The glasses also track your head movement, so you can be placed into a 3D picture or video feed like you would with a pair of virtual reality goggles....MORE
Related:
“Immersive Journalism” Using Virtual Reality to Put the Viewer In the Story
"Facebook, Oculus, And Businesses' Thirst For Virtual Reality"

Meanwhile, at Pearson Labs:
Beyond gaming: virtual reality hits the classroom