Occipital’s Low-Cost Tracker for All-In-Ones

Sign up for dev kits at Occipital. Image credit: Occipital

Many headsets like the Gear VR, some low-cost Google Cardboard headsets, and many new all-in-one headsets are great low-cost solutions that enable consumers to try VR with a low cost of entry. Although they offer decent virtual reality experiences, the other more sophisticated headsets like the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift provide far more immersive virtual reality experiences.

This is because of two reasons. One, the big players generally include better displays. This is not always the case, though. The Gear VR’s display less matches the big players in terms of resolution. So another reason is actually more important. This reason is tracking. Low-cost headsets as of now have not ever contained the sophisticated tracking systems that make super-immersive VR possible.

A company called Occipital, which got its start producing depth sensing cameras, aims to change the field of virtual reality headsets with a low-cost tracking platform. If Occipital is successful, low-end VR headsets will potentially be much better than they are now.

https://youtu.be/aVdWED6kfKc

More specifically, Occipital is aiming for SteamVR-levels of accuracy. Considered to be the high standard of virtual reality tracking, SteamVR uses a ton of costly sensors that must be mounted to walls. In contrast, Occipital’s system takes an inside-out tracking approach while being super low cost. It can use one camera and one infrared scanner to produce 6 degrees of freedom tracking like the HTC Vive.

Occipital’s new tracking platform was designed by a team with a significant amount of experience in the field of mobile laser scanning. Currently, they sell a $349 depth camera for the iPhone. They offer an iPhone mixed reality system as well. The iPhone mixed reality system called the Bridge costs $399.

It is one of the only mixed reality platforms that is currently available for iOS devices. Their new tracking platform has both a software and hardware wing. Their software platform is aggressively hitting the market with a promotional deal. Small developers will be able to access their tracking software for free. That is if they plan on using the software for less than 10,000 consumer devices.

Image credit: Occipital

This works out great for smaller devs for a few reasons. Small developers will be able to start building mixed reality and virtual reality apps without paying a huge amount of licensing fees in the beginning of development. If a developer becomes successful and more than 10,000 people begin using Occipital’s software, this will change to 10 dollars per device. At this point of product sales, developers should be in a better position to pay licensing fees.

Hardware

Image credit: Occipital

As for hardware, Occipital is offering low-cost camera solutions that work with its software. Posted on their site, along with price estimates, are a fisheye camera, an IR projector, and a “Structure Core” to house these other two components. The fisheye camera has an “ultra-wide 160˚ field of view and global shutter.” The IR project is “Custom designed from the ground up for both a wide range as well as exceptional precision.” Finally, their 3rd hardware option the Structure core is “A completely new design built to be the perfect sensor for AR/VR SLAM and mixed reality.“

Image credit: Occipital

Occipital projects that one camera solutions will run $9 and dual camera solutions $16. This means that for roughly 16 dollars, a headset can include a sensor to track in a sophisticated manner like the HTC Vive. The tech demos do look quite impressive but it remains to be seen how well Occipital’s platform actually works in real-life conditions.

Image credit: Occipital