This is more interesting than the Oculus rift to me, seems crazy that Valve would let this go, I guess the video gaming applications are more limited, but the tabletop gaming stuff they are talking about in this tested video are crazy.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/technicalillusions/castar-the-most-versatile-ar-and-vr-system

1 day and they are already funded at $434,760

Looks cool. If this is successful, Valve (or someone else) can buy them up later. Such is the way of the start up.

They need to sort those corrective lenses out ASAP. Not seeing the grey paper could e amazing.

Thank you for posting this.

i see this thing as being really cool for board gaming, virtual sculpting, or lay they greysheet on a table and have a virtual pinball machine. I also think this is a completely different market than what the Rift is going for. This thing is tech for board games whereas the Rift is tech for videogames.

Of course Valve opted out of this. I can't think of many opportunities they could have utilized with it. If Valve was invested in Tabletop gaming, then it would have been a surprise. Cool stuff, though.

@noizy said:

considering Valve fired them under very potentially contentious circumstances, I'd be somewhat surprised if Jeri and Rick willingly sell their project back to them.

http://www.develop-online.net/news/valve-s-perfect-hiring-hierarchy-has-hidden-management-clique-like-high-school/0115316

but who knows? Maybe their exit agreement gave Valve first dibs.

Now we can have the pokemon / yui-gi-oh games we've all been waiting for.

This has me thinking about a really weird dystopian future.

We all have cybernetic eyes and walk around in a totally dark and dirty, lifeless world. Everything is produced with materials to assist our AR/VR eyes, so we perceive it as perfection. Neon candy-coated awesomeness. In reality, everything is just toneless and dull and covered in dust and grime, and completely devoid of light sources.

...oh well, off to bed.

Oh wow, this is the first I'm reading about this. I knew about the firings, but didn't know about the internal politics.

You'd better have a clean white wall where you play your video games!

I can totally see why Valve dropped it. The technology is fantastic, but the applications of it are fairly limited, and it's really not the sort of product a big corporation would want to bother with.

@probablytuna:

Obviously it's only one side of the story, but it sounds pretty plausible to me.

I thought "augmented reality" are things that cross real world and game world things which Valve is definitely doing.

last year valve had that peace with that magazine this was show there along with other weird Gravity Gun looking things.