Osterhout Design Group (ODG), maker of the world’s most advanced mobile Augmented Reality (AR) Smartglasses, including the Enterprise focused R-7, and OTOY Inc., the pioneering cloud graphics company, today announced a collaboration to combine their technologies to deliver mind-bending mobile, un-tethered experiences with the potential to replace every digital screen in your life. A combination of ODG’s next generation displays, with fully embedded head-worn computing technology, and OTOY’s state-of the-art light field rendering and network streaming engine will be demonstrated at the seventh annual Augmented World Expo (AWE) in Santa Clara, California, June 1 – 2.
“This collaboration is a match made in AR heaven,” said Ralph Osterhout, CEO of ODG. “OTOY loves our fully integrated hardware and believes that it will change mobile computing as we know it. ODG loves OTOY’s cloud-based light field streaming and hybrid rendering services. Together, we aim to develop and provide killer experiences on our products with an initial focus on our ‘Project Horizon’ wide field of view (WFOV) demonstration platform.”
“ODG’s R7 augmented reality smart glasses are already in a league of their own in the AR space,” said OTOY CEO and founder Jules Urbach. “When I first tried on ODG’s next generation WFOV Horizon glasses, I felt like I had jumped ahead two generations. With four times the pixel density of any wearable device I have ever seen, these glasses are a game changer for our industry. We are extremely excited to bring OTOY’s light field and streaming technology to ODG’s Horizon Platform, and deliver holographic content at mind blowing resolutions beyond anything consumers have experienced before.”
Better Than All Your Current Screens
The Platform will be able to dynamically switch between VR and AR modes, delivering 4K 3D at up to 120 frames per second (fps) in a sunglasses form factor, surpassing the physical pixel density of every screen in your home (TV, PC, tablet, phone). As a result of the collaboration, the system will beam holographic rendered AR/VR images into the viewer’s eyes with full adaptive opacity for occlusion and realistic lighting in mixed reality experiences that fit naturally into the real world.
Because OTOY’s cloud-based light field content is interactive, live and unlimited in scale, the viewer will be able to enjoy infinitely complex games, photorealistic VR/MR media and shared experiences. These experiences can be streamed to the device and re-projected with extremely low latency and minimal battery drain on the glasses.
A Virtual Movie Screen and Other Use Cases
ODG’s new WFOV Horizon Platform generates a high frame rate, 3D experience equivalent in size and clarity to the center seat in a high-end cinema. The addition of OTOY’s rendering and cloud services will enable the platform to beam the equivalent of 8K HDR TV streams with wide color gamut and amazing contrast directly onto your hand, wall or phone. With dynamic real-time lighting and hybrid cloud-rendering the platform will display the most sophisticated and photorealistic content anywhere you want to see it in the real, or virtual world.
For developers: the ODG-OTOY System will also deliver an app and portal compositor, that will provide access to live feeds of cloud, desktop and mobile apps, stacked on virtual holographic depth planes. The combined system is intended to support wireless screencasting from a PC (4K @120 fps), as well as iOS/OSX (AirPlay) or Android (Chromecast) device.
As a VR platform, the system will stack up against the highest-end headsets. It has higher pixel density than any VR system currently on the market, absolutely no screen-door effect, with head-tracker latency of 1 millisecond (ms). It also has low-persistence OLED displays with up to 120 fps and high contrast.
To experience for yourself the magic of OTOY technology on ODG’s Project Horizon, go to ODG’s booth at AWE. And stay tuned for more killer experiences and product announcements that will change the face of mobile computing and entertainment.
