Avegant, which has so far focused on headsets for viewing video, has raised $13.7m in additional funding to further develop its ‘light field’ displays. The FT reports that Avegant has now raised around $50 million since its start in 2012. The company has investment from Intel and the new round included Applied Materials. We recently wrote about the Avegant component. (Avegant Announces New Display Light Field Tech).
In the release last month, Avegant quoted Jeremy Bailenson, founding director of Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab and at the time of the investment, Prof. Bailensen told the Financial Times. “It sounds counterintuitive that good AR needs to make some objects blurry but this is how our visual system works, when we focus on objects close up, the faraway scene goes out of focus.” He added: “Being able to closely examine virtual objects is one of the main reasons one would bother to use AR. Most systems can’t render AR objects close enough to touch them.”
Analyst Comment
The IEEE Spectrum went to see the Avegant headset and there is an interesting article here and a general introductory video here. (BR)
