Who says that Virtual Reality (VR) must be practically inadequate? Certainly not Nolo, the company behind a motion-tracking system developed for mobile VR gaming and view 3D configurators that tries to lower the often astronomical price of headsets so more people can enjoy the experience.
While VR is gaining more and more popularity, especially in the gaming community, where immersive experiences are the main focus, its use has been very expensive. For example, HTC Vive costs €799, while Nolo costs only one-eighth as much.
The Nolo tracking system consists of a base station, a headset marker and two controllers that ensure smooth collaboration with your mobile device. “Our team founded Nolo with the vision of making the benefits of the technology accessible to all walks of life,” the team says on its website, “we believe that mobile VR is the perfect platform because of its affordability and ease of use.
Better yet, Nolo says it’s fully compatible with SteamVR, which means you could theoretically access Vive’s entire content library for a fraction of the price.
The headset marker can be placed on any smartphone-containing VR device (such as Gear VR, Google Daydream or Cardboard), while the base station claims to have a field of view of 100 degrees.
It looks like the Nolo setup is compatible with Android devices, although the company says it will work with iOS at a later date. And while SteamVR compatibility is probably the biggest attraction for Nolo enthusiasts right now, the team says the device can also be used with native mobile VR games.
With three weeks left in the Kickstarter campaign, Nolo has already raised nearly $190,000 from more than 1,300 donors. But don’t get excited too soon – as Upload VR points out, Nolo’s wireless setup requires that you stream content from a PC via the Riftcat and VRidge applications, which are associated with latency issues. While Nolo supposedly can keep the delay under 20 milliseconds even if it’s off by a minute, the gameplay could make it almost impossible.
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