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Intel teases depth sensing HTC Vive add-on

by Mark Tyson on 4 August 2016, 09:31

Tags: HTC (TPE:2498), Intel (NASDAQ:INTC)

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Intel's annual IDF developer conference is set to kick-off in San Francisco on 16th August, with VR technology expected to be a major theme. Yesterday one of its engineers Tweeted information about an interesting VR project the chipmaker is working on. The Tweet has now been removed but various sites saved and published pictures of an HTC Vive headset with a RealSense powered central 'horn' integrated.

The now missing Tweet revealed the picture above, with the description "Industrial design team nailed it". New to the HTC Vive HMD, you can clearly see the central 'horn', which is the Intel RealSense integrated component. Either side of the 'horn' is a set of three cameras opening up lots of useful, accurate sensory information for VR system processing.

Tweet source, Dimitri Diakopoulos, is an Intel Prototyping Engineer and Upload VR managed to get some illuminating further information out of him before he was 'silenced'. Diakopoulos said that the RealSense 'horn' could track hand movement as well as IR-tracked controllers. Furthermore, its camera arrays can scan the environment in real-time. Such environment sensing could help you move around in VR without pratfalls in reality – it could help you avoid falling over an object in your room or standing on the house cat, for example.

HTC's Vive is already smartly designed with an integrated outward facing camera but Intel's enhancement of this feature could expand the utility value of such a sensor. Upload VR reckons it could eliminate fiddly setups when you use your HMD in different rooms too.

HEXUS Forums :: 4 Comments

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Posted by Ttaskmaster - Thu 04 Aug 2016 12:25
“Steve? Yeah, Hi, this is Anders over at HTC… We have come to the understanding that our customers don't look stupid enough when using our Vive product… Yeah, I know, right? Yeah, so we were thinking - They'd look like complete prats if they had a whacking great rhino horn on the front of their faces…. Yep, all that looking up and down while standing in funny poses… Yeah, like some freaky Ceratosaurus… Aw, come on, it'll be hi-LAR-ious!!!”
Posted by eviling - Thu 04 Aug 2016 15:51
fairly sure this look is already available for transmog in WoW :)
Posted by jigger - Thu 04 Aug 2016 21:13
ttaskmaster
“steve? Yeah, hi, this is anders over at htc… We have come to the understanding that our customers don't look stupid enough when using our vive product… Yeah, i know, right? Yeah, so we were thinking - they'd look like complete prats if they had a whacking great rhino horn on the front of their faces…. Yep, all that looking up and down while standing in funny poses… Yeah, like some freaky ceratosaurus… Aw, come on, it'll be hi-lar-ious!!!”

pmsl
Posted by edzieba - Fri 05 Aug 2016 12:41
Either side of the ‘horn’ is a set of three cameras opening up lots of useful, accurate sensory information for VR system processing.
The Intel Realsense camera module has two cameras: one RGB colour camera, one nIR phase=time-of-flight camera; and one nIR pulse emitter.

In function, this will be broadly similar to the existing Leap Motion front-mounts for the Rive (and Rift). The main difference will be the addition of the colour camera data to the Leap Motion's depth-only data. The Leap Motion contains two nIR cameras along with a pulses nIR emitter, and the cameras themselves are somewhat more capable than the ones in the Intel Realsense module (much wider field of view). Using two Realsense modules should give them about the same field of view as the Leap Motion.