Create a New Gate into The World of Augmented Reality, Welcome Mira Prism
Before looking at Mira Prism itself I would like to talk a little about the company Mira Labs Inc.
Mira Labs is a company based in Los Angeles, that is founded by Ben Taft, Matt Stern and Montana Reed with the vision to enhance the way humans interact with each other using augmented reality (AR). When this Mira prism was pitched to some of the major companies, they were in their seniors in college at University of Southern California (USC). Their pitch received 1.5 million dollars in seed funding and helped kick off the project in 2016. Since then Mira Labs have released their first batch of Mira Prism headsets to the public on July 2017 of this year and they hope to have more coming for the Christmas season.
Mira Prism is an augmented reality headset that is very much like Google Cardboard for AR. Augmented reality have been done before by big leading companies such as Microsoft, Sony, Epson and many more, however Mira Labs have accomplished bring AR experience for a fraction of the price and comes with a unique striking feature that is not found with many AR glasses that are on the market today which I will talk about little later.
Mira prism may not be the most technologically advanced augmented glasses out there like that of Microsoft HoloLens, Meta 2, Sony SmartEyeglass, Epson Moverio BT-200 but these devices often comes at such a steep price with the lower end costing around $1000 and some costing even up to $15,000 with the steep price turning away many consumers and developers. Now this is where Mira prism comes in, providing solid AR experience, at a price point of $99.
The low price point is justified by the fact that Mira Prism does not have any on-board electronics of any kind. As the Mira Prism is very much like that of google cardboard or Samsung VR, it is a shell with a unique optical lens that reflects the projected 3D image into the line of sight. Since there are no on-board electronics Mira Prism requires the users to insert their mobile devices to make use of the Mira Prism. Currently, Mira Prism only supports iPhone 6 and higher and does not support any android devices for the reason being that the product is built upon Apple’s augmented reality software kit (ARKit).
With recent releases, the company is moving toward using Unity, widely popular game development platform that we use in our class, as their backbone of their software thus it is very likely to see Mira Prism supporting android very soon. For those who purchased the Mira Prism’s developer kit earlier on this year, Mira Labs also provide set of unity sample tutorials for developing for Mira Prisms.
Mira Labs was able to integrate ARKit and Unity by using stereoscopic camera rendering, technique for creating the sense of depth of object for binocular vision, along with Lens Distortion warp mesh and by using front facing camera calibration in conjunction with printed markers along the inside of the headset to “pin” virtual images onto real world. These technique to fix the virtual object in space may not be as sophisticated as that of spatial mapping technology used by Microsoft HoloLens or Meta 2 but does an amazing job of providing a solid AR experience, not to mention the 60 degree field of vision that is just outstanding.
Biggest strength of Mira Prism lies in the ability to share the AR experience with others. All other AR glasses on the market provide a personalized experience, as what one sees cannot be viewed by others unless using some form of gimmick to project image onto a screen, however Mira Prism’s spectator mode allows multiple users to view the same virtual object in real time and interact with the virtual object. Allowing for more shared AR experience that made AR games such as Pokémon GO so popular in 2016. In addition, Mira Prism allows the user to record videos of the AR experience that can be sent over which others can see through the Mira Prism, in to the company’s vision and philosophy of enhancing and enriching the way human interact with each other using augmented reality.
Overall Mira Labs did an amazing job of creating new way for people to enjoy the world of AR at a price that consumers and developers would be willing to pay for a solid AR experience. There some challenges that Mira Prism faces as there are limited number of Mira-enabled apps on the market and limitation set for android developers, but as more developers jump on-board, I am sure there will some fantastic games and apps for Mira Prism and positive news for android developers.
Mira Prism website: site
Links for all information: link