When Valve cut-off a ton of their employees, dubbed the “great cleansing”, two specific engineers not only left the company, but left with their project as well. Ex-Valve engineers Jeri Ellsworth and Rick Johnson created the CastAR, which takes a whole different approach to modified-reality tech by placing tiny projectors the shades.
The way it works is that the projectors display images to a specialized, reflective screen, which then projects them back at your face, and then is split into left-eye and right-eye images for your 3D viewing pleasure. To ensure that the 3D image is always in the right perspective, even if you move your head, tiny LEDs track and help calculate the right angles.
From a consumer standpoint, this could be used to play games, having characters pop in and out of your field-of-vision, or display helpful information. It’s all very much glued silicon and messy parts right now, but there is a possibility of it becoming a real product; The Verge had a chance to use them in-person, in case that’s interesting.
Via: The Verge