Google’s CardBoard devices have been around for some time. Hundreds of developers are creating apps for them. Without touchless interaction. Until now.
pmdtechnologies (pmd), Google’s depth sensing partner for Project Tango, now is making its 3D technology available for CardBoard developers and has successfully partnered with gestigon to enable the most intuitive and immersive input for VR: touchless interaction.
pmd is sponsor of the Techcrunch Hackathon 2016 in New York City and hosting a contest. We will equip the hackers with everything they need to build new and exciting software. The development kit will enable them to use the setup for hand tracking, gesture recognition and much more. But what they will do with it in the end, is all up to them.
Together with our friends at Gestigon and Scandy, we offer a unique combination: Carnival, and a pico flexx in a CardBoard VR headset. The pmd CamBoard pico flexx 3D Time-of-Flight (TOF) camera, attached to the CardBoard, delivers depth data and a point cloud. Carnival provides a 3D gesture recognition API integrated into Unity for an immersive VR experience. Enriching 3D content comes from Scandy.
Hackers will get a Samsung S7 as development platform. Experienced Unity developers will feel right at home with the Gestigon Carnival gesture recognition Unity Asset.
Alternatively, if they want to dive deeper, they can use pmd’s Royale C++ API to directly access the pico flexx TOF camera’s depth images and point clouds, giving full freedom to create full featured 3D applications from the ground up.
Pmd’s 3D ToF technology in combination with gestigon’s Carnival SDK enables hackers to understand where users’ hands and fingertips are. Playing VR chess, re-decorating your VR living room, grap/touch/push/pull VR content and even bringing real objects into the virtual world.
At the NY TechCrunch Hackathon, developers also will be introduced to the Scandy API. Scandy will provide an alpha API for developers to query the full Scandy.co platform, which will enable access to 3D files that can be easily imported to Unity VR apps. They will also be demoing their 3D scanning app for Android. Scandy has been working with pmd to enable the pico flexx to create 3D scans in real time on Android smartphones.
For more info about the pmd contest at Techcrunch Hackathon, check out:
http://www.pmdtec.com/hackathon-nyc
http://www.disruptny2016.devpost.com