Canon Launching Its MREAL Headset March 1st, Will Allow Designers To Prototype Using Augmented Reality
Canon announced the launch of its MREAL system for “mixed reality” today, which includes a head-mounted display that allows wearers to combine virtual objects with the real world in 3D, which essentially sounds like a product designer’s dream. On the consumer side, augmented reality hasn’t done a great job of proving itself generally useful at this point, but in an industrial design setting, the payoff could be big, and that’s why Canon’s MREAL is priced at a professional-level $125,000.
The MREAL headset isn’t nearly as sleek as Google Glass, and instead of projecting info on transparent displays, it actually takes in video of your surroundings, runs it through a computer which supplies the virtual elements, and then delivers a live video feed to dual displays mounted in the visor strapped to a user’s face. It’s not light and all-day wearable like Glass, but it means the system can deliver extremely clear 3D computer-generated images that blend more realistically with a user’s actual surroundings, which is exactly what you want if you’re designing a coffee table for a specific living room space, for instance, or want to see what a car concept looks like under showroom lights before you build a physical model.
Plus, this launch of innovative interactive design tools from an established player invites startups to try to build equivalent low-cost solutions to disrupt the market. I’d love to see a hardware prototyping app come out for Google Glass when third-party devs start building for it, which could potentially bring the cost of AR prototyping down to a more manageable, startup-friendly level.