The ultimate goal of virtual reality developers is to recreate the holodeck, first named and shown in Star Trek The Next Generation. In a new video feature on The Verge, the web site is given a tour of Microsoft"s Edison Labs where the goal of the creators is to create truly realistic looking 3D virtual environments without the need for glasses.
Stevie Bathiche, who is the director of research at Microsoft"s applied sciences lab, shows off several different types of technology that his group is creating. One is a hardware set up that projects LED light to a person"s eyes. The setup apparently uses a Kinect to detect a person"s head movement. The video shows the final result, although there"s really no way to experience the full effect via a 2D video. There"s another demo in the video that shows a larger display that moves its image when the user moves.
Bathiche hints that Microsoft has some cooler tech ideas in the works in this kind of virtual environment genre but it"s still not ready to be seen by the public.