The incursion of Augmented Reality in daily life has been on a rise in the recent times. Mobile device manufacturers are investing billions of dollars into creating products that aim to provide an unparalleled user experience. However, that translates into higher product and service costs for the users, which prevents a quick adoption of this new technology. Take Microsoft’s Hololens for example, which is one of the best products in the Augmented Reality segment but comes at a steep price of around $4000 and is exclusively meant for developers.
To make advanced AR more accessible to the masses, Mira, an augmented reality start-up, has come up with a novel solution. Taking inspirations from smartphone-dependent VR headsets like Samsung Gear VR and Google Daydream View, Mira has come up with a smartphone-dependent AR kit by the name of Prism. Just like VR headsets, Prism requires the smartphone, particularly an iPhone for now, to work. The user has to put his/her iPhone into the headset and use the included controller to interact with AR elements. This makes it easy for anyone to gain access to Hololens-levels of AR content by paying a quarter of its price.
The system is basically a very clever app utilising simple science. The app utilises the iPhone’s potent hardware to render graphics and take user inputs from the remote at the same time. The movements are tracked by sensors from the smartphone. All the headset has to do is reflect the image from the phone’s display on to the glass of the headset, which makes the user see the virtual elements placed in real space.
As with all start-ups, Mira had to go the hard way to attain $1.5 million funding. The initial prototype device was made out of wall-mounted fish bowl available off the shelf. Mira co-founders – Matt Stern and Ben Taft, utilised 3D printed parts and the glass lens from the fish bowl to make a working prototype. The finished product though has bespoke spares made to work perfectly with an iPhone.
What’s good about the headset is that it aims to bring top-notch augmented reality content to the masses without asking a price similar to that of a unit from Microsoft or even HTC’s Vive. Mira has started accepting pre-orders for the device and all the technology giants are expecting to see an incremental interest from the public, despite having a dearth of variety of AR content to be consumed.
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