Virtual reality and the real world must coexist, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said today at his company's developer conference in San Francisco. He hopes to mix the virtual and real together with Project Alloy, an aptly named initiative that promises to free VR from the confines of tethers and dedicated spaces in people's living rooms.
Instead of a single hardware product, Alloy represents Intel's vision of how future VR headsets should function. Compared to the current generation of high-end headsets like the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive, the most striking difference is the lack of a series of cables connecting it to a PC. Alloy-based headsets will "cut the VR cord," allowing a free range of motion across a large space.
Jettisoning the tether is made possible by a small piece of hardware Intel is calling a "Head-Mounted Device," which handles all of the computing power needed to run VR apps. It's a similar concept to the smartphones that power the Samsung Gear VR and Google Cardboard, but much more powerful.
Project Alloy-based headsets will also incorporate Intel's RealSense cameras. Besides eliminating the need for dedicated tracking sensors, RealSense can display real-world objects—like your hands or a person standing in front of you—in the virtual world. Intel engineer Craig Raymond showed it off by approaching Krzanich on stage while wearing an Alloy prototype headset. Krzanich's head immediately came into view, with the RealSense camera tracking his movements in relation to the virtual room in which Raymond was standing.
The demonstration was not perfect—it took a few tries for Raymond to get his hands to appear when he walked to a new location on stage, and the live feed that RealSense uses to deliver the real-world elements was choppy and jagged.
But assuming Intel irons those issues out before Alloy technology ships to developers in 2017, it will have a powerful VR solution capable of eliminating the "chaperone" problem with which the Vive and Rift have to deal. Instead of a grid that appears on those headsets when the wearer gets to close to the walls or other objects of the real world, those objects could themselves appear and disappear as needed in the virtual world.
The main ingredient in making that happen, of course, is enough computing power to render both the real and virtual worlds simultaneously. That's what Intel does best, and if it can deliver this time, it will likely inspire the confidence developers need to make the next generation of VR games and apps.