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Immerse an Entire Room in Virtual Reality with Immersis on Kickstarter

The hype for Virtual Reality is higher than ever, with news of Apple’s patent for a VR headset for iPhone going viral.   But there is a company you probably haven’t heard of named Catopsys (CATadiOptric Projection SYStems for virtual and mixed reality), and their Kickstarter campaign just cleared it’s goal of $100,000, for a 3D immersion technology called Immersis.

The claim: Virtual Reality for multiple users in any room, with no headsets.  Well, headsets are optional, but not necessary. How does it work?

First, Immersis users create a 3D model of the room they’ll be turning into a virtual playpen.  The projector has default setting of a fixed point of view, which makes it an innovative projector, because it can adapt to any room shape and present a clear and coherent vision, even if it’s projected onto 3 walls with 2 right angles.  There is also an option to use a tracking device to have the projected digital reality interact with a user’s physical movements, which makes it a bit more like the virtual reality headsets we are used to seeing.  If you were a startup who creates 3D printing labs for schools or universities, this would be a very dynamic presentation tool indeed.

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Anamorphic projection takes any panoramic content (video games, 3D applications, panoramic photo formats like Google’s Photosphere) and distorts its perspective relative to the projector’s position and the 3D pixel map or model of the viewing room.  This could open up to 3rd party apps for collaborative modeling or viewing entire 3D scanned objects, or designing changes to a room, lab, or any type of facility.

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3D immersive solutions typically rely on a single projector for each side of a dedicated room, which creates a higher cost than Immersis.  In turn, this means that 3D immersion is mostly reserved for industrial applications and only occasionally for entertainment.  Other consumer-level alternatives are regular projectors fit with a fisheye lens, creating a panoramic projection, but the image is generally weakened by distortion.

The origin story? Catopsys was created in 2013 by Daniel Duhautbout, an ex-IBM employee and serial entreprenuer.  The device’s research and development was led by Théo Nassour in France and a team of “passionate and hardcore” gamers.

Nassour spoke about the key technology that separates Immersis from other 3D-immersion technology:

“This 3D-based anamorphosis is nothing trivial.  To my knowledge, apart from fisheyes-fitted projectors, which give a poor rendering, there isn’t any equivalent solution to what we are offering with Immersis on the market.  The major differentiation is in our software, since we take a 3D model of the room as the basis to deform the image and map it to the shape of the room, based on the projector’s position, and we hold the patents for that.  The nearest approaches you could think of, are Microsoft’s research projects RoomAlive and IllumiRoom, but so far, these are conceptual projects only. Then, you could consider Oculus Rift as our nearest competitor in the low-cost 3D immersion arena. But wearing these virtual reality goggles provides a very different experience; after 20mn, you get motion sickness.”

Kickstarter backers that contributed $150 or more will get an early developer kit with full access to the Developer Center. $1000 or more will get them Immersis, which has a proposed retail price of $2500.