Even Moverio’s less powerful (compared to VR displays) head tracking would make something like Google Glass overheat, McCracken said, which is why Glass input is primarily voice command or a physical touch. McCracken, who has developed for Glass, said that more advanced uses can only be accomplished with something more powerful.
Epson has swept in and gotten a head start on others in the smart glasses field. I think with their full head tracking system, and something like a Microsoft Xbox Kinect like projector and receiver pointed outward wherever you are looking, it might be possible to get a very realistic “information overlay”. Microsoft’s XBox Kinect has a 3D projector/scanner built-in which could potentially be another sensor built-in to the Epson glasses. The Augmented Reality apps on Moverio only do edge detection to provide the information overlay placement. If you had an additional 3D map (approximating the shapes and depth as well) you might be able to correlate the two data feeds (edges and a 3D mesh) to get a really good informational overlay at close range, normal arm’s length working distances.
Granted the Kinect is rather large in comparison to the Epson Moverio glasses. The resolution is also geared for longer distances too. At a very short distance XBox Kinect may not quite be what you’re looking for to improve the informational overlay. But an Epson Moverio paired up with a Kinect-like 3D projector/scanner could tie into the head tracking and allow some greater degree of accurate video overlay. Check out this video for a hack to use the Kinect as a 3D scanner:
Also as the pull-quote mentions Epson has done an interesting cost-benefit analysis and decided a smartphone level CPU and motherboard were absolutely necessary for making Moverio work. No doubt that light weight and miniature size of cellphones has by itself revolutionized the mobile phone industry. Now it’s time to leverage all that work and see what “else” the super power efficient mobile cpu’s can do along with their mobile gpu counterparts. I think this sudden announcement by Epson is going to cause a tidal wave of product announcements similar to the wave following the iPhone introduction in 2007. Prior to that Blackberry and it’s pseudo smartphone were the monopoly holders in the category they created (mobile phone as email browser). Now Epson is trying to show there’s a much wider application of the technology outside of Google Glass and Oculus Rift.
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