"What is IT?" I'm sorry, I just get sick of the "If we don't know what it is it must be ZZZZZOMGAWESUMMMMMMMMM" hype train. Eric Siebel teaches at UW because the company he founded to make head-wearable displays went bankrupt. I remember applying to a job there in 1999. Combine that with the company that went balls deep in 48frame for The Hobbit and you get a whole bunch of speculation about a company that has a proven non-track record.A recent invention by a noted inventor, 49-year-old scientist Dean Kamen, is generating excitement and mystery. "IT", is so extraordinary, that it has drawn the attention of technology visionaries Jeff Bezos (Amazon) and Steve Jobs (Apple) and the investment dollars of pre-eminent Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr, and Credit Suisse First Boston, among others. Those who have seen the two prototypes have been variously amazed, delighted, surprised and awestruck. Jeff Bezos is reported to have snorted uncontrollably (his laugh sounds like a pig snorting).
well, for what its worth, I've been told the tech is legitimately amazing and it is already pretty functional from a mentor who is friends with an employee. I'm interested.
It was legitimately amazing in 1996. Nobody's been able to scale it or find a use for it, though. Retinal projection is how the HMD on the AH-64 Apache works and has had; thing is, that didn't exactly set the world on fire and neither the Army nor the Air Force has really reached into that bag'o'tricks since. And that's DOD money. There's a Reality Distortion Field around VR that makes its proponents go "If we build it they will come." Thing of it is, even 3D movies are scaling back and that's the most demonstrable profit center there is. We process 3D primarily through parallax. We create parallax primarily through moving our head around. Anything that is intended for your eyes fails. Anything that is intended for your space wins. Unfortunately, anything that's intended for your space is necessarily exclusive and takes up a lot of room. This is 7 years old and it kicks the shit out of Oculus. And it still hasn't set the world afire.
I remember that vid and hoping someone would try to use it, that never happened. I don't think any of this tech is really stuff that everyone will just run and pick up. It's meant for a group of people small in number on the planet. Pretty sure if it pans out, I wouldn't even be able to afford it. But I still think it's cool and would like to see the end result.