World’s lightest portable immersive VR glasses coming soon
Working for Pocketables, I get a lot of product announcements. The following is one of the three I’ve gotten in the past year that have me interested in an upcoming product.
Dlodlo is a VR glasses company releasing a four-ounce immersive VR headset that doesn’t make you look like you’re at an audition for a Daft Punk music video or doing a test to get your Motorcycle Safety Certificate.
I don’t have one of these in hand, I haven’t seen or played with it, this is entirely from a press release and some research as a note, so don’t expect any grand insights on the product.
They claim a look and feel more along the lines of sunglasses than headgear, with no dizziness, distortion, or lag while supporting video in a 110 degree field of vision. I’m getting a bit more of the ski goggle feel from these, but I won’t argue as I haven’t played with them in person yet.
The glasses are Bluetooth 4.0 and OS agnostic, so you don’t have to have a specific computer, phone, or operating system in order to be able to communicate with them. They have Android 4.4 loaded into the glasses to power everything along with a 2000mAh battery to keep them going.
I believe the specs call for full HD (2K video,) although it mentions supporting 4K. I’m guessing there’s some downscaling involved if they’re only touting 2K. Ah well.
If this works as well as advertised, some of the 3D VR applications you formerly had to wear a diving bell of a VR headset will be within the reach of people who don’t feel like putting a helmet on every time they want to see a VR demo.
For a good contrast in sizing take a look at the Oculus Rift which will be coming out Q1 of 2016 with the same resolution specs and evidently require a USB tether to a computer.
I’ll point out the headphones were separate in the picture on the right, there have been some developments, I believe they’re built in now, and that was also a development model so we’ll see what it looks like when it comes to the consumers.
The Rift also has a very hearty head start on game integration for not being released to consumers yet (you can grab a developer’s kit here), so we’ll have to see whether the Dlodlo is going to be able to take its place.
The Dlodlo is coming out next month, so it appears the home VR eyewear wars have begun. Hopefully we’ve also reached a point where the glasses can entertain, act as a VR remote, and replace a piece of equipment as a television, but I’m not confident the battery’s up for that level yet.
With an Android device, or just some software and those glasses, you’ve got a much less geeky looking Google Glass. I don’t see that it has a camera on it, but maybe that’s what the future of Glass should have been considering the resentment people showed to people recording them.
You can see the press release here.
