Silicon Valley computer vision startup Eonite is revealing its low-cost, accurate, and low-power solution for inside-out positional head tracking for virtual reality and augmented reality headsets.
That’s a big deal, because VR and AR headsets will be much better once when they have this kind of tracking, which allows a headset to sense its environment. By contrast, today’s most powerful VR headsets — such as the HTC Vive and the Oculus Rift — use outside-in tracking, where external sensors are placed in a room to detect a person wearing a headset.
Eonite promises to make VR and AR much more immersive and fun, and that’s why it has been able to raise $5.25 million in seed funding from leading Silicon Valley venture capitalists and angels, including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Signia Venture Partners, Presence Capital, The VR Fund, Rising Tide, and CLI Ventures.
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Above: Youssri Helmy, CEO of Eonite. | Image Credit: Dean Takahashi
“They’ve really nailed the inside-out tracking,” said Rick Thompson, partner at Signia Venture Partners, in an interview.
Eonite belives that its Eonite Vantage Head Tracker software will be much better at tracking than current options and will cost a lot less. Youssri Helmy, CEO and founder of Eonite, said in an interview with GamesBeat that external sensors account for as much as 30 percent of the cost of today’s VR headsets. Eonite can eliminate that cost simply by using a 3D depth sensor on a camera on the headset.
I tried the system in a demo. Eonite used a limited camera with a 40-degree field of view. But the sensor worked well. I could turn around and track some flying drones in a demo app, and the system generally followed wherever I moved my eyes and body. I was able to move around, and I wasn’t limited to the areas where there were external sensors.
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Source: Venture Beat