Hololens, Vive, Gear VR, etc., have all come out as the biggest players in terms of running AR or VR. But when you take the case of all these devices, especially AR, you can see that they are hindered in some ways as they can’t actually track your fingers or hand. You will always need a controller with you if you want to interact with something. This is a rather mundane process as it comes across as an inconvenience.
The smart blokes at Leap Motion invented a new AR headgear that doesn’t require you to hold any remote for interacting with objects – The project is named “North Star.” Yes! You can now use your hands directly to interact with objects created with AR. The most notable point is that Leap Motion claims that their headset will only cost under $600 when mass produced. Now, this is something of a nightmare for the competitors as interacting with AR without no remote is one of the most engaging ways to enjoy AR based tech.
In fact, the company calls their new tech, the perfect AR hardware. Another disruptive announcement made by the company is that their software and hardware designs will be made open source from next week.
Leap Motion has made countless design optimizations for North Star. For example, the device uses ellipsoidal reflectors. The advantage of using an ellipsoidal mirror is that when you put the display at one side of the mirror and the eye on the other side, the image will be seen in focus and much bigger to the user’s eyes.
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But having an opaque mirror in front of the user’s face doesn’t seem like a wise choice if you want to see what’s in front of you. So the company first created the ellipsoidal mirror out of optical grade acrylic by a process called diamond cutting.
This ensured that the lens where precise to every dimension. Then the team coated a thin silver coating on the glass, making it 50% transparent and 50% reflective. When everything was put together, it created a display that gives the user 105 degrees of view with 1600×1440 resolution per eye.
With countless design optimizations coupled with their state-of-the-art motion detecting capabilities, the North Star is nothing less than an impressive creation aimed in the right direction.