With products like Google’s Glass, the Oculus Rift, and even certain features found on the Nintendo 3DS, augmented, mixed, and virtual reality are starting to make some headway in the consumer space. Canon, best known for its cameras, is looking to break into the mixed reality scene with its new head-mounted display.

If you have ever been to a fancy arcade — Disney Quest in Disney World’s Downtown Disney Westside comes to mind — you’ve likely had a chance to try out virtual or mixed reality. Generally, you strap on a headset and perhaps some kind of glove or controller, and the head-mounted display will invoke an overlay on top of reality. Sometimes you can interact with the overlay, sometimes you can’t. If you have played with a Nintendo 3DS, the stock game Face Raiders and the AR cards that come with games is a consumer-level application of the technology. Canon’s mixed reality system, dubbed MReal, is quite similar to the kind of mixed reality rigs found at those fancy arcades.

The core of the setup is the Canon HMD (head-mounted display) which works in conjunction with various sensors — optical and magnetic, as well as visual markers — to help create the mixed reality environment. The HMD employs two cameras located in front of each eye that captures video and shoots it off to an off-board, tethered computer. The computer then combines the real-world visuals with computer-generated visuals, and beams that back to two monitors placed in front of the eyes within the HMD. The unit combines with a development platform, dubbed the MR Platform, which allows companies to create mixed reality images to display on the HMD.

I got to try out a few MReal demos last night, the first of which involved two car seats sitting by themselves out in the open. Above the car seats were 16 optical sensors attached to a frame. After having the HMD strapped onto my head, I sat in the passenger car seat, and a rep used an iPad to begin the demo. The full interior of a car appeared around me — the steering wheel, the dashboard, the doors, windows, and a virtual tablet attached to the dashboard. Since the HMD is a mixed reality unit, I was able to look through the windshield and see everything at the event — the people, tables, chairs, and so on. I was able to step out of the virtual car, and walk around the entire vehicle, bending down to examine the hubcaps and headlights.

The demonstrator used the iPad to change the color and trimming of the car on the fly, turn on the headlights, and manipulate the virtual tablet attached to the virtual dashboard. The graphical quality of the car was clean, vaguely similar in quality to something between a PS2 and a PS3, though not nearly as detailed. Unfortunately, the car demo experienced a bit of visual flickering every now and then, but overall the experience was worth having.

Another demo I tried was more virtual reality than mixed, and employed a backdrop full of visual markers and something vaguely resembling a desk or countertop sporting a bunch of those visual markers as well. When the demo began, the backdrop and desk-like object changed into a lush forest, body of water, and a log. Wearing the HMD, I was able to walk around the log, and even bend down to look through it to the other side. An adorable little dinosaur was roaming around the environment, and interacted with the log in a few ways, such as propping himself up on it. The demo was short, but it was neat to walk around a virtual environment with a virtual creature.

The rig will release on March 1, but is unfortunately not targeted to general consumers, as the thing retails for $125,000, with a $25,000 price tag for annual maintenance — a little more than the Oculus Rift’s $300 price tag. For now, the unit will be for companies looking to expand their prototyping efforts, or perhaps, for example, car dealerships that want to allow customers to modify a car before they buy it. The tech is certainly cool, but don’t be surprised if you don’t ever run into a rig in the wild apart from expensive car dealerships, for now.

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