Another day, another Kickstarter project. This one is a headset which looks similar to the virtual reality units that we’ve seen in the past, like the Oculus Rift, but its purpose is slightly less ‘video game’ and a bit more ‘portable cinema’.
The Avegant Glyph is being billed as a “portable mobile theatre” in its Kickstarter pitch and the argument for the gadget put forth by Avegant is pretty convincing. Convincing enough that the company has bypassed their $250,00 goal already, hitting $420,000 with a further 29 days left to secure additional funding.
The Glyph is unusual in that it doesn’t use a mini-LED or LCD screen inside the headset to display whatever media is being watched. Instead, Avegant claims that they have a Virtual Retinal Display. In other words they have “… figured out how to project images directly onto your retina, creating sharp, stark images”. That’s… enough to sell the Glyph to us right there. The result is a per-eye resolution of 1,280 x 720, along with some decent stereo sound.
Unfortunately, the beta models that will become available soon have a limited battery life, you’ll be able to get through a single movie in a sitting if you’re away from a power source, along with an episode of The Walking Dead (translation: about three hours).
Source: Kickstarter via Engadget