{"id":54167,"date":"2013-05-20T12:34:18","date_gmt":"2013-05-20T10:34:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/?p=54167"},"modified":"2013-05-20T12:47:28","modified_gmt":"2013-05-20T10:47:28","slug":"fired-valve-engineers-working-on-ar-glasses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/gadgets\/54167-fired-valve-engineers-working-on-ar-glasses","title":{"rendered":"Fired Valve engineers working on AR glasses"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Following the firing of a number of Valve employees in February 2013, it\u2019s come to light that two of the former employees were working on augmented reality glasses for the game company.<\/p>\n<p>The story that emerged in February said that Valve had laid-off 25 employees, two of which were Jeri Ellsworth, one of the company\u2019s well-known hardware developers, and Rick Johnson, a programmer at the company.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Gabe [Newell] was completely behind it,\u201d said Ellsworth. \u201cI talked to Gabe, and he talked to the lawyers, and he&#8217;s like, &#8216;It&#8217;s theirs, make it happen,&#8217; because he could see we were passionate about it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Valve gave the two former employees free reign over their creation and what to do with it.<\/p>\n<p><script height=\"336px\" width=\"600px\" src=\"http:\/\/player.ooyala.com\/iframe.js#ec=xwODBxYjox8eHvdZJ63Ssa65hZY1MFvV&#038;pbid=dcc84e41db014454b08662a766057e2b\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>A built-in camera tracks infra-red LEDs around the edge of a screen or surface you\u2019re using, allowing tracking of head movement and positioning. This allows for a 3D perspective and the ability to look around and interact with objects.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is going to change the way that people interact with computers and play games,&#8221; said Ellsworth. &#8220;This is what I&#8217;m going to build come hell or high water. It was just a no-brainer that when we were not at Valve&#8230; we just had to do it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Ellsworth and Johnson have formed a company, Technical Illusions, to help commercialise the tech and product.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_54171\" style=\"width: 609px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/Technical-Illusions-AR-glasses-image-credit-The-Verge.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-54171\" class=\"size-full wp-image-54171\" alt=\"Technical Illusions AR glasses - image credit The Verge\" src=\"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/05\/Technical-Illusions-AR-glasses-image-credit-The-Verge.jpg\" width=\"599\" height=\"399\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-54171\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Technical Illusions AR glasses &#8211; image credit The Verge<\/p><\/div>\n<h6>Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2013\/5\/18\/4343382\/technical-illusions-valve-augmented-reality-glasses-jeri-ellsworth-rick-johnson\" target=\"_blank\">The Verge<\/a><\/h6>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">More Valve news:<\/h3>\n<p><b><a href=\"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/pc\/53820-half-life-2-gets-oculus-rift-support.html\">Half-Life 2 gets Oculus Rift support<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n<p><b><a href=\"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/pc\/53501-portal-appears-on-steam-for-linux.html\">Portal appears on Steam for Linux<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n<p><b><a href=\"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/pc\/53272-steam-subscriptions-launched-by-valve.html\">Steam Subscriptions launched by Valve<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Valve employees take their passion project with them<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":196,"featured_media":54168,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_enabled":true,"_sma_x_custom_text":"","_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8585],"tags":[9246,833,10043,1929,1515,21,8862,10042],"class_list":["post-54167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gadgets","tag-ar-glasses","tag-augmented-reality","tag-castar","tag-gadget","tag-gadgets-1","tag-headline","tag-jeri-ellsworth","tag-rick-johnson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/196"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54167"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54172,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54167\/revisions\/54172"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}