Jeri Ellsworth, a former Valve employee, has teamed up with Rick Johnson, also from Valve, to bring Technical Illusions and the castAR to life. CastAR is a new AR/VR accessory designed to put you right into the games you’re playing. Jeri and Rick have launched a Kickstarter campaign so that this project can continue to move forward. Reaching over $290,000 in roughly 24 hours, castAR is well on its way to its $400,000 goal.
The co-founders of Technical Illusions, Jeri Ellsworth and Rick Johnson.
What is castAR?
“It’s going to deliver on the dream of the Holodeck.” -Bre Pettis, Co-Founder and CEO, MakerBot Industries
CastAR personally reminds me of the Iron Man movies when Tony Stark is interacting with Jarvis to display what he wants to see and eliminate the rest. Sure, I may be over exaggerating how it works, but it’s the only thing I can compare it to.
What castAR really does is project a 3D image on to a retro-reflective service that adjusts as you move with a positional tracking system. Using the AR/VR clip on accessory, you can get true AR without the need for the surface, or even go into full VR. You can also interact with the images using a tool called the Magic Wand to control the things you are seeing.
Here are the glasses and the retro-reflective surface.
In the Kickstarter video, it shows several different uses for the castAR. Be it for education, table-top gaming, or even actual video games, the system is pretty amazing. It takes what we’ve seen in movies and brings them that much closer to reality.
Let me know what you think about the castAR’s role in the future of gaming down below. I would love to see something like this for consoles personally, but that’s just me. Also, make sure you check out the castAR Kickstarter page for more in-depth details. You can also visit the Technical Illusions website as well.
