Mind. Blown.

[geneb]

Here's a note I've been posting around to various places.  I call it copy/paste evangelism.
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Here's a message I posted on the simpits-tech list:
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Well today I had my mind blown.  Not just a little either.  We're talking
full skullcap separation here.

I've been peripherially aware of an augmented reality project called
castAR.  I saw a still photo of it in action the other day and this caused
me to reach out to the designer with some questions about it.

Holeeee shit.

The castAR in its most basic form is a pair of 720p pico projectors
attached to what amounts to eyeglass frames, coupled with some glue logic
and a TrackIR style head tracker.

The light output of the projectors is so low that you won't see the image
they project on a normal surface.  It requires what is called a "retro
reflective surface"  It's essentially the same thing as a theatre's
projection screen.

Now think about this - you're in a cockpit with all these things that
won't reflect the light from the projectors, but "outside" is this
material.  As you move your head around, you're going to see outside
visuals where ever the castAR output hits the screen material.  Because of
the head tracking (accurate to .07mm apparently) you're always going to
see the right visual.

You see why my head exploded?

Now add to the outside visuals - instead of stuffing your cockpit with
LCDs for the various avionics displays, stuff properly sized bits of this
reflective material where ever the instruments go.  When you're looking at
them, you'll be seeing those glass displays where they belong.

That's why the top of my head came off.

This is the most disruptive technology I think I've ever seen.  This could
single handedly revitalize the whole flight simulator genre.  From what
I've read, adding support for castAR isn't that difficult of a programming
challenge.  I suspect that it won't take long for Eagle Dynamics and 1C to
add support for castAR once it hits the market.

The company is called Technical Illusions and the hardware is designed by
Jeri Ellsworth.  The website is http://www.technicalillusions.com

They're going to be opening a Kickstarter on October 15th - I would highly
recommend that you folks check it out when it goes up.  Come hell or high
water, I'm going to figure out how to get my hands on a pair of these
things as early as I can.
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This morning, Technical Illusions posted a new demo video of the castAR in use with a flight simulator demo:

castAR Test Footage - Flight Simulator

I think you can see why I'm so insanely excited about this thing.

Please sign up for the forum over there and cheer them on!

g.

[Nat Crea]

But they're not HD Gene! LOL.

Seriously...very Different concept...yes my brain is hurting a little...

Nat

[Maurice]

Very cool technology but I think this would be much more applicable to gaming and desktop flying with a virtual cockpit than for serious cockpit builders.

Assuming you could get the HD resolutions that seem to be an absolute requirement these days, projecting from your glasses to a special screen would be very problematic once inside a cockpit where the projection would be partially blocked by the windows framing.

At the very end of the sample video, someone puts their hand in front of the screen and it blocks the projection on the hand part, but with the window frames being much closer to the glasses than to the screen, the blocked area would be considerably magnified I would think.

Also, since it depends on where you are aiming the glasses, you might see the instruments but not the outside world at the same time or vice versa unless the projected area can be as big as you need it to be, but I think that would be asking a lot from just a pair of glasses but who knows? Also, if you move your head even a tiny bit, I think the instruments would no longer be projected in the right location as would happen if using a real projector as well.

All & all, incredible technology and very cool stuff but don't discard your TVs or projectors yet. However, now that I have switched from a full cockpit to a desktop sim, this may make my desktop sim with a virtual cockpit much better than my old setup in a few years. 

Maurice

[geneb]

If I was going to build a 737 cockpit, I'd install retroreflective material in each one of the windows instead of having a screen external to the cockpit.  There wouldn't be any window framing to block your view because the display screen IS the window.

For configurations where the screen is outside the cockpit (for things like WWII era fighters), then yes the framing will block the projection, but since you can't see through the framing either, you really don't lose anything.

The same goes for the glass displays - they'd have a panel of the RR material in them instead of LCDs. 

Keep in mind that the head tracker is accurate to .07mm and you can use multiple head-tracking targets to ensure that no matter where you put your head, the visual you see will be correct.

Unless the thing you're looking at has an RR coating of some kind, you'll never see the projected image in that spot. 
You'll likely never be able to use castAR with Microsoft FSX, but maybe X-Plane if Austin can be convinced to add support.  No application that doesn't explicitly work with castAR will work properly.  This isn't just a set of goggles - it's designed to do a specific job and without application support it won't work.

I've been told that it doesn't take much to add support to existing games/sims using their SDK, so you can likely expect to see all kinds of simulators and games with castAR support in short order.

I also found out that because of how the RR material works, two people could share the same RR display surfaces.  This means you and your co-pilot get visuals that are correctly offset because the tracker knows where you are in relation to the tracker target.  (The head tracking is similar to a TrackIR, but in reverse.  The camera is on the glasses and the IR tracking sources are on one or more fixed boxes.)  This makes not only dual instruction practical, but *tandem* dual instruction, or combat.  (think F-15E or F/A-18D/F)

With the castAR, your cockpit would NOT be "virtual".  That would defeat the whole point of the castAR system.  Your cockpit would be physical, just the displays within the cockpit would be virtual.  I don't know how well it would work for something like a 2" steam gauge, but for an EICAS or something, it'd be a drop in the bucket.

g.

[Maurice]

For configurations where the screen is outside the cockpit (for things like WWII era fighters), then yes the framing will block the projection, but since you can't see through the framing either, you really don't lose anything.

I think you would since the dark area on the screen would be magnified and wider than the blocking object but I should not really be commenting on things I do not fully or even partially understand. Too much speculation is a bad thing when you don't know the facts 

But you burst my bubble about FSX    I may just have to switch to XPlane if they ever support this technology 

Maurice

[geneb]

From what I've been told, there's some "big boy" sim types that want to use this technology in the way I've been describing.  I suspect that once prototype hardware is available, both X-Plane and Prepar3D will support it.  You can be just about guaranteed that FlightGear will.

g.

[Nat Crea]

P.S. Gene, I thought you were going to announce a 737 Collimated display originally

Nat

[geneb]

I designed on 737 display for a guy in Colorado because I committed to do it.

Building them for general use ain't gonna happen until 2017 when the patent expires.  Rockwell-Collins would make a greasy stain out of me otherwise.

g.