Just yesterday I asked whether mobile phones had stopped evolving. With an endless tirade of slab-style phones I really couldn’t see what could happen next. Where could phones go from here?
Well, a lot of you are interested in wearable tech. A watch that you can speak into is cool, but personally I’m looking forward to an intelligent trouser belt that can auto-extend when I have too much food.
Then, then I saw something and it really made me think.
Remember this portable 3D screen? Well, they’ve pretty much hit the target they need, so we should see it pretty soon.
Why do we need it? Why do we need something that tries to make our smartphones into 3D or virtual reality glasses? 3D TV hasn’t really lit my candle and I’m not really mad-keen on watching 3D films at the cinema either. However, despite initially discounting these crazy-looking things I’m starting to see something. You see, despite the strange PR shots (of locations that I’d never be seen wearing them) there’s still a certain something about virtual reality.
People have been saying that virtual reality is “the next big thing” for years now, but apart from the odd bit of augmented reality we’ve not really seen virtual reality cross into the mainstream.
What I’m doing here is leading you gently into the video below. It’s slightly not safe for work because there’s some slightly naked people in it, but you don’t see anything. However, what it does show is just how good virtual reality has now become. Instead of moving around a wire-frame world you can now interact with real people that have been scanned by some 3D scanning wizardry. To be honest I’m not totally sure how it all pieces together and what all the teminology and equipment is, but just imagine this technology coupled with those virtual reality cases above.
Could we, possibly, see an accessory like the vrAse provided with handsets in a few years time? Throw in a bit of advanced Google Map trickery and you could perhaps walk around an ultra-real street view of London whilst sat on your sofa? The tech is already there. We’ve got a compass in our phones, a gyroscope and a high-quality screen. Stick that in front of your face with those vrAse frames and, boom.. you could be just like this guy..