Somehow, some of our comments on Intel at IBC didn’t make it into our IBC report. Intel was showing an Asus PC with an Oculus Rift to show how its new processors could cope with VR. We remarked that we hadn’t heard much recently about the Project Alloy headset that Intel had been promoting. “Hmmm, neither have we” said the staff on the booth.
After the show, we checked this out and found that the company had decided to get behind the Microsoft Mixed Reality project that will see new headsets released along with the Creators Edition of Windows 10 on October 17th, rather than developing its own solution.
By coincidence, our friends at Jon Peddie Research, which publishes Graphics Speak, also looked at the topic. The newsletter said that Intel has decided to discontinue its development and instead focus on investing in other virtual and augmented reality technologies such as Thunderbolt, Optane, Wigig, and RealSense depth-sensing. The paper also said that Intel has a new partnership with Blueprint Reality, a Vancouver-based virtual reality company that developed the MixCast VR tool.
The tool, says Gfx Speak, is causing a buzz in VR because it can show an undistorted view of a VR environment on a 2D screen, allowing educators and others to monitor what is going on when a user is in a VR world. The technology also allows the recording of VR experiences for video replay.
Intel showed VR at IBC. Image:Meko
