Fired Valve engineers working on AR glasses

Following the firing of a number of Valve employees in February 2013, it’s come to light that two of the former employees were working on augmented reality glasses for the game company.

The story that emerged in February said that Valve had laid-off 25 employees, two of which were Jeri Ellsworth, one of the company’s well-known hardware developers, and Rick Johnson, a programmer at the company.

Ellsworth and Johnson were working on AR glasses prior to their departure from the company, and although the glasses were technically a Valve product, Ellsworth and Johnson have been able to continue work on the project under their own steam.

“Gabe [Newell] was completely behind it,” said Ellsworth. “I talked to Gabe, and he talked to the lawyers, and he’s like, ‘It’s theirs, make it happen,’ because he could see we were passionate about it.”

Valve gave the two former employees free reign over their creation and what to do with it.

The glasses project, CastAR, is relatively different to that of Google Glass or even the Oculus Rift. CastAR projects 3D images onto 2D surfaces, allowing you to interact with a miniature virtual world based in the real world.

A built-in camera tracks infra-red LEDs around the edge of a screen or surface you’re using, allowing tracking of head movement and positioning. This allows for a 3D perspective and the ability to look around and interact with objects.

The CastAR glasses have been demoed with a 3D Jenga-like game, along with a shooter, showing the versatility and possible usages for the device.

“This is going to change the way that people interact with computers and play games,” said Ellsworth. “This is what I’m going to build come hell or high water. It was just a no-brainer that when we were not at Valve… we just had to do it.”

Ellsworth and Johnson have formed a company, Technical Illusions, to help commercialise the tech and product.