One of the other presentations that really caught my eye was Deep VR. This presentation was given by Santambrogio and it is an application of Virtual Reality that is used in the health sector. While virtual reality has been seen in various medical applications like surgical applications, MRI’s and other interesting applications like AccuVein, Deep VR was one of the most innovative applications of virtual reality. This application is used to help people in a psychiatric way. Mental health has been one of the most dangerous and harmful diseases out there. It is very hard to not only diagnose depression and anxiety but also to help an individual get out of it. However hard someone tries, it is impossible to place yourself in their shoes completely. People with anxiety are troubled and need help to relax and calm down. This is where Deep VR comes in. It is a perfect way for someone with mental health issues to just calm down and focus.

Deep VR is strictly dependent on the user’s breathing. Initially it was to help with yoga and exercises. It is an interesting way to monitor the breathing patterns of an individual and have them truly focus on their breathing. The controllers in the game is nothing but your breathing pattern. The game itself adapts to how the user is breathing. This helps the user stay in control and focus on the breathing aspect. Meditation and yoga are a part of our curriculum in school back in India. In my personal experience, it is extremely hard to keep focus of your breathing when there are so many distractions around. One of the most important parts of meditation is concentration and when it’s lost initially, it is very hard to regain. Therefore, this application has a huge amount of potential to help people concentrate on a task and learn to focus.

One of the first things that caught my eye about Deep VR was the fact that the graphics were extremely beautiful and serene. The entire set up and environment resembles a vast underwater land. Most of the objects are designed to be low poly and emulates a seascape. The color contrast between different objects are also extremely soothing to your eyes. This beautiful seascape is bound to calm down anyone immersed in it. Another aspect which assists in helping people to relax is the music and the sound effects. It has a soothing calm aura about it which helps people relax. The way the user moves through the entire environment is by just breathing. The faster you breathe, the faster you move through the environment. Another interesting addition to the application are the additional data sent to the application. There are various sensors which record various activities of the user. This data is then used to alter the game and change the environment accordingly. This is the crux of the game.

I still distinctly remember my yoga teacher asking us to lie down, close our eyes and imagine a breezy meadow. This kind of imagination is not an imagination anymore. With the use of this application, the entire process of relaxing becomes much more easy. The immersive experience will actually make any person feel like they are in a place that resembles the calmness of a meadow along with the breezy wind. It aids the imagination by immersing us in a world away from reality and all the pressure and responsibilities that come along with it.

Project North Star

The leap motion the company we all know for impeccable hand tracking (released in 2014) has come out with a new open source release for a mixed reality headset called project north star. This is much better than the mixed reality headsets till now i.e., Microsoft hololens (released in 3/30/2016) and magic leap (released in 8/8/2018).

PNS was outsourced to Japan where the project is being created and where the innovation for this device happens. Since it has not been completed yet, the product software is open source and free to be downloaded. The blueprint build the headset is also available to download online. The Microsoft hololens costed around 3000$ - 5000$ and the cost of magic leap is also around 3000$. The total cost can be around 150 Euros. The hololens has a 17.5 degrees vertical and 30 degrees horizontal field of view while the magic leap has 30 degrees vertical and 50 degrees horizontal field of view. In comparison PNS has 70 degrees vertical and 95 degrees horizontal field of view. This is a major improvement over the hololens and magic leap. It also has a 180 degree hand tracking sensor and pushes 12 frames per second. The main reason for open sourcing the project was to help the whole world participate and join in the movement to have a augmented world.

The most impressive part of the headset isn't the promised visual fidelity, but the built-in hand-tracking gestures. Leap Motion says it has incorporated the same 180-degree hand-tracking tech it developed several years ago into Project North Star. The headset has two "two ultra-bright, low-persistence" displays with 1,600 x 1,440 resolution, each running at 120 frames per second. Those are already markedly better visual specs than what high-end VR headsets like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive offer.

There were many issues that were carefully thought about while creating PNS. The issues were related to head tracking, speed, field of view, object interaction with the hand, comfort, artistic aspects, occlusion with the hand, etc. As these issues were tackled one by one they witnessed the raised of a mesmerizing tool that was beautifully created with the cheapest items possible. There were reflective surface goggles that costed a little more than the rest of the components to make. But the rest were much cheaper. The reflective goggles reflect 50% of the light that falls on it to make the display more appealing.

The developers say it is important to look at the following details for further progression of the work:

1. Inward-facing embedded cameras for automatic and precise alignment of the augmented image with the user’s eyes as well as the face tracking.
2. Head mounted ambient light sensors for 360 degree lighting estimation.
3. Directional speakers neat the ears for discrete, localized audio feedback.
4. Electromagnetic coatings on the reflectors for electrically controllable variable transparency.
5. Micro-actuators that move the displays by fractions of a millimeter to allow for variable and dynamic depth of field based on eye convergence.

Talking about haptics there is still a very big concern as there is nothing more than the headset to give feedback as there are no wearables on the hand as well. VR headsets and gloves perform much better in these scenarios. But this raises a bigger question was AR meant for the similar use as VR. VR is purely immersive and can have such equipment indoors. But ARs main functionality is mapping the world around us with interesting and useful models. This is still a topic of debate.

Compared to the hololens and the magic leap this device always requires a physical connection to a computer (be it a phone or a PC). Apart from this it is not great at physically mapping the environment as compared to the rest two. But with the best of all the three devices we start to see the real start of consumer ready augmented reality devices which will be very immersive.