EEVblog 1488 - Tilt Five Augmented Reality AR Glasses - First Reaction

[EEVblog]

Dave tries Jeri Ellsworth's Tilt Five augmented reality AR glasses for the first time!
Unboxing, first reaction, and a bit of a first user review.

00:00 - Tilt Five AR Kickstarter Glasses
01:42 - Unboxing
06:34 - The retroreflective game board
08:58 - Plugging into USB3 and fan cooling
09:35 - The glasses design robustness
10:42 - First test FAIL!
12:44 - Jeri to the rescue! (USB3 data rate matters)
13:52 - First reaction!
18:16 - As good as I expected!
18:57 - 1080p resolution
21:27 - Power consumption measurement
23:49 - Two thumbs up! + Fan noise
24:37 - Physics demo + ambient light measurements
28:24 - Over 1000lux ambient
29:09 - Looking through the lens
29:39 - Some real gaming action
31:12 - Fantastic quality mode
33:55 - Is it tiring on the eyes?
34:31 - Conclusion

[SeanB]

Yes interview time needed, especially if she is also there for the teardown as well to explain all the design decisions made.

[Psi]

Dave's view on VR is somewhat out of date, but it's hard to know by how much without knowing what headset he last used.

The improvements in VR within the last 7 years have been like the change from an 386 running DOS to a Pentium 266 running windows 98se.  It blows everything out of the water from before about 7 years ago.

Still a little way to go for 100% full realistic immersion, need like 4-8k 120hz per eye instead of 1-2k 90hz.
But things have changed massively since the old days of VR.

The immersion you get in a modern VR game with a modern VR headset is pretty amazing.  Very well suited for like a fighter jet cockpit or racing car game. Or any game where you would normally be seated and where looking all around you is part of the game.

[FrankT]

I'm getting "Video is unavailable.  Video is private"

[Psi]

I'm getting "Video is unavailable.  Video is private"

Someone noticed an editing error during the recent livestream so he pulled it, will be reuploaded.

[Doctorandus_P]

I find it misleading that in quite a lot of advertisements for this thing images are rendered beyond the edge of the retro reflective material.

[Bud]

To my taste, the selected method of interaction with that weird looking oversized wand is awkward.

[Fred27]

I agree, the wand is odd. The Leap Motion does a great job of hand tracking and I can imagine it would work well with this.

That Lego game looks familiar. It's based on a Unity tutorial / framework that was very easy to use to create a game. Even my 7 year old managed to follow along and create something interesting and playable.

I managed to add VR and accidentally end up in a world inhabited by 15 foot lego minifigures.
https://twitter.com/fredm27/status/1338592592322318338

[EEVblog]

I find it misleading that in quite a lot of advertisements for this thing images are rendered beyond the edge of the retro reflective material.

That's probably to try and convey the 3D effect in 2D image. I'll give a pass for that as it's hard to convey in advertising.

[thm_w]

I'm surprised at how little light is coming out of the projectors, I can't see anything at all until you turn your head to the camera then just a slight light is visible.
Maybe it dims down really quickly, but seems efficiently used. How bright is the image relative to a normal computer monitor?
 
Resolution of the projectors is 1280x720, so setting anything above that should not be noticeable.

Lots of products never heard of: https://vr-compare.com/ar
Tilt five has the widest FOV of 110 deg

[Ranayna]

Dave's view on VR is somewhat out of date, but it's hard to know by how much without knowing what headset he last used.

One thing that Dave said stood out for me in that context: You can still see and interact with your environment. You are not fully cut off when using something like this.
That alone would be big incentive for me. I can't even stand closed headphones, because i can't hear my environment with those on. Noisecancelling headphones are even worse.
Call me paranoid

[Bud]

Buy yourself an angle grinder and you will appreciate complete disconnection from the environment 

[EEVblog]

I'm surprised at how little light is coming out of the projectors, I can't see anything at all until you turn your head to the camera then just a slight light is visible.
Maybe it dims down really quickly, but seems efficiently used. How bright is the image relative to a normal computer monitor?

Hard to quantify as the eye has an awesome ability to adjust. But it certainly doesn't seem dim to me.

But while the tech is cool, it does need a killer app/game though.

[nctnico]

Dave's view on VR is somewhat out of date, but it's hard to know by how much without knowing what headset he last used.

Agreed. My sons got some recent VR units (Oculus Quest 2) and these are absolutely stunning even though they are not the most expensive ones out there. They even have cameras to project your surrounding if necessary so you are not completely blind with the VR goggles on. The advantage is that you can have both augmented and full virtual reality with a single unit.

[SiliconWizard]

Yes. While I find the idea of this project pretty cool, VR units can do both VR and AR in a much better way visually.

But the cool thing about this is that players are still in the real world, seeing reality directly and not through a camera and video processing. And it probably doesn't come with the headaches and feeling nauseous that VR can bring. Not to talk about looking really stupid from the outside.

Although I'm a bit skeptical about that finding a sizable market, I do wish them well. Do they provide a development kit (hardware + software) for developers/companies willing to develop games for this? I think that part would be critical to reach some success.

[james_s]

The problem I have with VR is I get awful motion sickness, my friend has a VR setup in a cockpit seat he built in his game room and the effect was stunning but I nearly hurled in his chair and I felt off for the whole rest of the day after playing that. It was cool enough that I kept doing it long after I probably should have stopped, and now just thinking about VR makes me a bit queasy.

[EEVblog]

Although I'm a bit skeptical about that finding a sizable market, I do wish them well. Do they provide a development kit (hardware + software) for developers/companies willing to develop games for this? I think that part would be critical to reach some success.

Yes, I believe that's the whole business model. Which is why the unit itself doesn't really come with any games, just essentially tech demos.

[EEVblog]

Dave's view on VR is somewhat out of date, but it's hard to know by how much without knowing what headset he last used.

Agreed. My sons got some recent VR units (Oculus Quest 2) and these are absolutely stunning even though they are not the most expensive ones out there. They even have cameras to project your surrounding if necessary so you are not completely blind with the VR goggles on. The advantage is that you can have both augmented and full virtual reality with a single unit.

It's been many years.
What do people do with VR goggles these days apart form the stupid Metaverse rubbish?
What is the go-to VR "experience"?
I know Barnacles uses his to watch movies. Do they have HDMI input?

The Oculus Meta 2 advertises "Next-level hardware that's easy to set up and safe to use" What is the safe to use thing about? 

[thm_w]

Safe to use implies not running into a wall or smashing a TV while you play, you can set the edge boundaries: https://www.oculus.com/safety-center/quest-2/
Also might have some relation to less motion sickness.

The go-to VR experience is gaming, very few people use them for movies. Metaverse isn't even a thing afaik.
Music/lightsaber game (beatsaber), shooters (half life), flight simulator, racing simulators, stuff like that.

https://www.roadtovr.com/best-oculus-quest-2-games-apps-rated-june-2022/
https://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2022/04/new-survey-reveals-awareness-of-virtual.html

[EEVblog]

The go-to VR experience is gaming, very few people use them for movies. Metaverse isn't even a thing afaik.
Music/lightsaber game (beatsaber), shooters (half life), flight simulator, racing simulators, stuff like that.

https://www.roadtovr.com/best-oculus-quest-2-games-apps-rated-june-2022/

And do these games run on the headset? or some other gaming system? (Yes, I know nothing about this stuff, I only have an Xbox One)

[abquke]

AR games are a thing, but I'd think this would be where one finally got Minority Report style interfacing with useful programs.

[thm_w]

The go-to VR experience is gaming, very few people use them for movies. Metaverse isn't even a thing afaik.
Music/lightsaber game (beatsaber), shooters (half life), flight simulator, racing simulators, stuff like that.

https://www.roadtovr.com/best-oculus-quest-2-games-apps-rated-june-2022/

And do these games run on the headset? or some other gaming system? (Yes, I know nothing about this stuff, I only have an Xbox One)

Those games linked on the roadtovr site do run on the Quest 2 standalone yeah.
The graphics processor in the Quest 2 is about 1/5th the power of an xbox one. So they are fairly cartoonish graphics.

Then to run modern games (flight simulator) you'd connect the Quest to a PC with wifi or a USB-C cable. Then let your PC do the heavy lifting.

Xbox doesn't do VR, and Playstation has their own VR headset.

[nctnico]

Dave's view on VR is somewhat out of date, but it's hard to know by how much without knowing what headset he last used.

Agreed. My sons got some recent VR units (Oculus Quest 2) and these are absolutely stunning even though they are not the most expensive ones out there. They even have cameras to project your surrounding if necessary so you are not completely blind with the VR goggles on. The advantage is that you can have both augmented and full virtual reality with a single unit.

It's been many years.
What do people do with VR goggles these days apart form the stupid Metaverse rubbish?
What is the go-to VR "experience"?
I know Barnacles uses his to watch movies. Do they have HDMI input?

The Oculus Meta 2 advertises "Next-level hardware that's easy to set up and safe to use" What is the safe to use thing about? 

My youngest son uses it for racing. He assembled a 'race driver gaming rig' from various parts (including a seat from a scrap BMW). Lots of games seem to support output to VR goggles. It is not difficult to add if the game already supports stereo vision output.

Safe to use: you can mark an area on the floor and if you go outside it, the image from the cameras will be mixed in so you are 'back' in your room again.

[thm_w]

Next question, is it realistically possible to setup a soldering station:
- Stereo microscope cameras (could probably use a normal stereo microscope, put a camera into each eyepiece)
- Feed into a VR headset with minimal processing (one image to each eye for simplicity?)

You'd get good ergonomics, similar to mantis. But you wouldn't be able to tilt your head around, without a lot of post processing.
Would also add latency, you can get down to 1-2 frame latency cameras but they are very expensive.

Probably not a realistic goal.

[Psi]

Next question, is it realistically possible to setup a soldering station:
- Stereo microscope cameras (could probably use a normal stereo microscope, put a camera into each eyepiece)
- Feed into a VR headset with minimal processing (one image to each eye for simplicity?)

You'd get good ergonomics, similar to mantis. But you wouldn't be able to tilt your head around, without a lot of post processing.
Would also add latency, you can get down to 1-2 frame latency cameras but they are very expensive.

Probably not a realistic goal.

I mean you could, but once you have the dual microscope,  dual camera, VR headset and a PC/GFX to drive it you'd have spent so much money you would have been better off just buying the mantis.
 
They're expensive, but so is VR.