The castAR Kickstarter is live!

[OmniAtlas]

The rift is terrible for flight simming (I had one).

Cant see your maps, or nd/pfd or controls...and it made me really nauseas.

[petersm99]

Hello OmniAtlas,

Could not answer earlier,

Sounds to be a very promising system that I will most definitely keep my eye on.
While I will most probably start my cockpit with one HD projector for the time being, I hope this new technology will develop into something really useable. For myself I would have to be able to see, feel and experience the system to be fully convinced. During the years the only visual system so far that really convinced me were the CAE fully collimated visual systems that are unachievable for home use. The CastAR systems specs will be the determining factors regarding my interest in the final product, how will peripheral vision appear, how will resolution versus refresh rate versus head movement appeal to me, etc.

Best Regards,
Marc

[Sammy-E]

Wow. Nice to find this stuff. Very tempted. Not sure which version to sign up for, the VR clip does not make much sense for flightsim, you cant see your maps, controls can you?
Eric

Edit: watched the triangulation show and convinced now. Guys, this will be great. Ordered the starter package, impulsive? Yeah maybe, I am no gambler, this feels like skipping expensive projectors or multiple screens. Lets hope and see!

[OmniAtlas]

The key is the fov from the 2 projectors. It is about 110 degrees I believe.

If this is adequate to give the effect of speed and cues from the periphery then we have a winner.

Any of you kickstart the 900 early bird special?

[iwik]

Thanks Gene,
Just pulled the trigger on the Pro Package, after watching the Triangulation Video.
Les

[Sammy-E]

Any of you kickstart the 900 early bird special?

Ha! No, that was a bit too much
forgot to thank the poster for letting us know about this.. Thanks!

[iwik]

Sammy,
Maybe Gene is, he wrote he was readying a sim for April.

Les

[Perik]

Yes, I’m sure Gene is one of the early adaptors – lucky guy

I had some thinking to clear up things for myself.

Do we actually need 3D / stereoscopic view as long as we talks about external visuals.
Our external objects are mostly at long distance so the 3D effect is almost nonexistent.
For me so far the main advantage with castAR is that you get your personal, precisely
positioned external view and same does your co-pilot – his personal view. No more crab-effect!!!!
as the images comes from your head position and not from a fixed position on the roof of your rig.

So the perfect match for our glasses would be to have the two beamers mounted to produce two images
side by side. As a side effect we would get a FOV of 130 degrees which should give a
great peripheral view. We could even run without the shutters and glass frame – just
mechanics for holding the beamers and tracker. We could even increase the number of beamers....

OK - this is for those that have a complete shell and internals.
For those who want/need a combination you must go for the 3D glass setup.

Just some thoughts from up north....where did I miss

[OmniAtlas]

What software will we be using to create this effect and integrate with FSX/P3D? I assume you want to fix the Y-AXIS and we are only interested in the X so we can look around.

[Perik]

Again thinking load….
What we need: Nothing special other than the tracker software which should be more or less
the same as TrackIR has done and already mention by Gene. It shouldn’t be too difficult
to code for the right people.

This will give FSX a 6DOF feedback position of your head so you can move around as you like.
What remains for someone to look at is how fast and precise the camera control in the FSX,
Xplane, Flightgear etc. is (Gene can maybe talk about the latter) – does it cope with the speed
of castAR tracking. Nothing is worse than a lagging tracking system.

For the image part of it, I think it goes like this.
The current beamers run at 1280x720 each. The “Monitor” will present itself as a 2560 x 720
display in Windows. Two ways to produce the 3D / Stereoscopic signal – either put the streams
for left and right eyes side by side or horizontal interleaved. Both are supported.
The hardware up at the glasses decodes and sends to the beamers accordingly. Interface is HDMI or DVI.

For 3D setup:
We need to precisely rotate, drag and size two camera views aligned in the same way as the beamers.
Easiest way will be to position the streams for Left and Right side by side in this 2560 wide “frame buffer”.

For 2D setup:
Same as above but two equal images – one for each eye/beamer or just one image but stretched to cover
the full width of 2560 where the odd / even pixels are going to the left / right beamer accordingly.

Generel comment:
The breakthrough technology with castAR is as I see it three things;

1. Very small, low weight and affordable beamers/ projectors – thx to the mobile industry.
2. Discovering the Retro reflective material properties.
3. A superfast 3D tracking / positioning system.

Combine this with two bright people - Jeri and Rich, then you have a “killer” device.

So for those who would like to experiment you could try the following 2D setup using
TrackIR and a couple of decent 300W “beamers”. Here you don't even need the retro material.