A Little Optical Magic Makes This Floating Display Pop

If there’s a reason that fancy holographic displays that respond to gestures are a science fiction staple, it’s probably because our current display technology is terrible. Oh sure, Retina displays …read more Continue reading A Little Optical Magic Makes This Floating Display Pop

Investigating Retroreflectors With One Heck of A Microscope

Retroreflectors are interesting materials, so known for their nature of reflecting light back to its source. Examples include street signs, bicycle reflectors, and cat’s eyes, which so hauntingly pierce the night. They’re also used in the Tilt Five tabletop AR system, for holographic gaming. [Adam McCombs] got his hands on …read more

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Immersive Augmented Reality on a Budget

By now we’ve all seen the cheap headsets that essentially stick a smartphone a few inches away from your face to function as a low-cost alternative to devices like Oculus Rift. Available for as little as a few dollars, it’s hard to beat these gadgets for experimenting with VR on a budget. But what about if you’re more interested in working with augmented reality, where rendered images are superimposed onto your real-world view rather than replacing it?

As it turns out, there are now cheap headsets to do that with your phone as well. [kvtoet] picked one of these gadgets …read more

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Dartboard Watches Your Throw; Catches Perfect Bullseyes

Some people really put a lot of effort into rigging the system. Why spend years practicing a skill and honing your technique to hit a perfect bullseye in darts when you can spend the time building an incredibly complicated auto-bullseye dartboard that’ll do it for you?

In fairness, what [Mark Rober] started three years ago seemed like a pretty simple task. He wanted to build a rig to move the dartboard’s bullseye to meet the predicted impact of any throw. Seems simple, but it turns out to be rather difficult, especially when you choose to roll your own motion capture …read more

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