Canon Mixed Reality headset

With products like Google’s Glass, the Oculus Rift, and even certain features found on the Nintendo 3DS, augmented, mixed, and virtual reality are starting to make some headway in the consumer space. Canon, best known for its cameras, is looking to break into the mixed reality scene with its new head-mounted display.


If you have ever been to a fancy arcade — Disney Quest in Disney World’s Downtown Disney Westside comes to mind — you’ve likely had a chance to try out virtual or mixed reality. Generally, you strap on a headset and perhaps some kind of glove or controller, and the head-mounted display will invoke an overlay on top of reality. Sometimes you can interact with the overlay, sometimes you can’t. If you have played with a Nintendo 3DS, the stock game Face Raiders and the AR cards that come with games is a consumer-level application of the technology. Canon’s mixed reality system, dubbed MReal, is quite similar to the kind of mixed reality rigs found at those fancy arcades.

The core of the setup is the Canon HMD (head-mounted display) which works in conjunction with various sensors — optical and magnetic, as well as visual markers — to help create the mixed reality environment. The HMD employs two cameras located in front of each eye that captures video and shoots it off to an off-board, tethered computer. The computer then combines the real-world visuals with computer-generated visuals, and beams that back to two monitors placed in front of the eyes within the HMD. The unit combines with a development platform, dubbed the MR Platform, which allows companies to create mixed reality images to display on the HMD.



The demonstrator used the iPad to change the color and trimming of the car on the fly, turn on the headlights, and manipulate the virtual tablet attached to the virtual dashboard. The graphical quality of the car was clean, vaguely similar in quality to something between a PS2 and a PS3, though not nearly as detailed. Unfortunately, the car demo experienced a bit of visual flickering every now and then, but overall the experience was worth having.