Valve’s recent announcement about their new Vive headset for virtual reality as well as Epic’s announcement that the Unreal Engine is now free made me realize that it is time to once again catalog the current set of future technologies vying for our attention. Just as pre-NUI computer users need the keyboard and mouse, the post-NUI user needs sensors and just as the pre-NUI user required a monitor to see what she was doing, the post-NUI user needs a headset. Here is the list for 2015 from which, you will notice, Google Glass is now absent:
Virtual Reality | Augmented Reality | Sensors | Development Platforms |
Oculus Rift | Microsoft HoloLens | Microsoft Kinect 2 | Unity 3D |
Samsung Gear VR | Magic Leap | Leap Motion | Unreal Engine |
Google Cardboard | castAR | Myo | WPF |
Valve HTC Vive | Epson Moverio | Intel RealSense | Cinder |
Sony Project Morpheus | Orbbec | openFrameworks | |
OSVR Razer | Eye Tribe Tracker | ||
Zeiss VR One | |||