Recently, I got to try out a prototype of a new product that brings a virtual reality platform to the iPhone 6 and 6+. Pinć is a new device and platform from Cordon Media; a company with experience in building software interfaces for large wall-sized screens, but that doesn’t really work on small smartphone screens… unless you turn them into virtual reality goggles. We’ve already seen Samsung try something like this with their new Gear VR product which can turn the Galaxy Note 4 into an Oculus Rift style portable virtual reality headset. I also got to use that one for a bit, and you can use it to smoothly look around a virtual world or two, but you need to use some buttons and a track pad on the right side of the goggles to navigate or activate items. It would have been so much cooler if I could use my hands in the virtual world.
Pinć agrees, and they’ve devised a way to get two point hand gestures to translate into a virtual world within the iPhone software. Currently, their prototype uses two battery powered rings that clip to your index fingers on each hand. The rings have a few little lights on them that indicate where your hands are in the virtual space. The rings also have buttons on them that you can press in order to activate buttons and gestures within the 3D world.
Before we get to that, let’s look at the hardware a little more first. The Pinć headset is indended to be much more portable than the Samsung Gear VR. It’s designed to fold down into a space that’s about twice as thick as an iPhone.
The viewing piece flips around out of the way so that you can use your iPhone in the normal 2D manner. Pinć is intending to make the headband straps automatically retract into the case as well, and there are slots where you can store the finger ring buttons as well as a spot for small earbuds to come out.
When the Pinć is unfolded and flipped around, some lenses pop out. You can see the slots on the bottom where the rings would be stored, too.
These rings tell the software where your hands are when you wear them on your fingers. The prototype rings look very primitive at this time, but the final product should be much thinner and more refined.
On the back of the case, a special lens is placed over the iPhone’s camera lens which makes the light-up rings visible to the virtual reality software. As long as the camera can see the lights on the rings on your fingers, it can place your hands in virtual space. Pressing the buttons on the rings will activate another light and send a “click” command to the software.
The VR goggles fold into a slightly thick yet pocket-friendly iPhone case.
The company president, Milan Baic, showed me how it all worked while the iPhone was plugged into an HDMI out cable that displayed the view on a large TV screen. It’s important to note that this software is not aimed towards immersive video games like the Oculus Rift. This is more about expanding your workspace and creating a larger environment for the things that you might do with your smartphone. For example, he showed apps that allowed you to do basic drawing, view emails, browse web pages, watch videos, look around 3D rooms or environments and browse virtual shopping centers. There’s even a virtual keyboard in Pinć’s virtual world, and you can use it because it can see your hands. Pinć’s software will be a free app in the app store, but it will be extendable by third party developers that can install other apps on top of it. Check out the video demo below for an impression of how it’s going to work.
Milan said that they would like to make a version for Android as well, but there are so many different form factors for Android phones, it really isn’t feasable at the moment. Still, their intention is that the software developed for their VR software will be capable of running on other platforms in the future. The SDK which will include prototype hardware will be available for pre-order soon and they’re planning on selling the device at cost at $99.
In Real Life
Milan’s demo looked pretty cool, but then it came time for me to try it out. The goggles wouldn’t even fit over my glasses, so I had to take those off. Since I’m near sighted, I actually could see the screen a bit (and some pixels), but my vision in each eye is not equal, so one side was blurrier. Milan said that you could choose specific lenses to be included with the device when ordering that could fix those issues. The other big problem was that the lenses inside the Pinć were pressing against my eyeballs. Like they were touching my eyes and I couldn’t blink. THAT was very uncomfortable and made me tear up a bit. So obviously their prototype doesn’t fit everyone quite right yet. Getting my hands to show up in the virtual world was a bit difficult too. You have to hold your hands kind of facing eachother so that the lights on the rings are visible to the iPhone’s camera. It felt a lot more difficult to learn than the first time I used the Xbox Kinect at a press event back in 2010.
What do you think? Is portable virtual reality gear for your smartphone the next big thing?
Originally published on Pocketnow on November 24, 2014. More from the Pocketnow archive.