Project Alloy Announced (VR Headset, Intel)

[ethomaz]

Intel's new Project Alloy is a wireless VR headset for 'merged reality'

Today, Intel announced a new virtual reality reference design it's calling Project Alloy, a cordless system the company says contains everything you need to have a VR experience without extraneous components. That means the headset contains the computational and graphics power necessary to create the virtual images and an internal battery for power, as well as 3D cameras and sensors powered by Intel's RealSense motion tracking tech. CEO Brian Krzanich says the device is capable of "merged reality," which blends images from the real world like handheld objects into virtual environments.

In a demo onstage at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, a Project Alloy wearer was able to use a dollar bill in his physical hand as a lathe to shave down a virtual block of gold in a VR environment. Krzanich was also brought into the VR scene, by way of Project Alloy's onboard cameras. This is the promise of mixed reality, he said, where virtual environments can integrate everything from our limbs and handheld objects to entire virtual representations of other people captured by cameras and sensors. "We believe the capability of Alloy and what it introduces is significant," Krzanich said. "It gives the opportunity to merge the physical and virtual world together."
Of course, Project Alloy doesn't seem as precise or high-definition as something like the HTC Vive using Valve's Lighthouse laser tracking system. However, it does represent a leap toward merging the type of cordless, lower-budget system we see with Samsung's Gear VR with a higher-end set of capabilities you'd more likely to get with the Oculus Rift.

[Legend]

That'll be goat if they can fine tune it.