The American company, Leap Motion Inc., has officially announced their plans for a new augmented reality (AR) program that they are calling Project North Star. It’s important to note that Leap Motion is not releasing a new headset but rather plans for a specific headset and a program that according to their official statement, “. . .is a full augmented reality platform that allows us to chart and sail the waters of a new world, where the digital and physical substrates exist as a single fluid experience.”
Specs of Project North Star
Leap Motion seems to be very confident in their new plans and program and rather than building and releasing an entirely new headset, they have put forth their plans to make an open source in the coming week for North Star.
Project North Star appears to take various virtual reality (VR) components from other projects and create a new AR headset with two fast-refreshing 3.5 inch LCD displays and a resolution of 1600x1440 per eye. The plans also state that the displays push 120 frames per second and offer a visual field of over 100 degrees. They are also proposing that their “world-class 180° hand tracking sensor” will be like no other system seen yet. Project North Star is meant to introduce people to a better AR experience and improve the hand tracking abilities in VR headsets that many are lacking. They are specifically attempting to articulate each finger in your hand separately to further implement physics of reality into AR and mixed reality games and programs.
According to Leap Motion, when mass produced, the program will roughly cost only $100. This is beneficial to many who are beginning to explore to world of AR without having to empty their bank account. If it is as good as it is speculated to be, it will also be extremely helpful to those already experienced in AR and VR.
Virtual reality in society today
Virtual reality has become the latest and greatest in not only video games but even the working world and if Project North Star fulfills all it’s projected promises, it will definitely change the way AR and VR and played. Although we may still be a long way off from a perfect VR headset, it appears that Leap Motion is making great leaps into better programming and pushing the envelope to get us to the level of a virtual world that many people want.
A statement from them reads that Project North Star “helps us ask the right questions, find the right answers and start to chart the course to a future we all want to live in”. It’s a bold statement but hopefully, it fulfills societies current needs and wants.
